Civerolo, K. L., J. W. Stehr, R. R. Dickerson, Determination of the Dynamic Response of a Nitric Oxide Detector, Review of Scientific Instruments, vol. 70(10), pp. 4078-4080, October 1999.
A chopper wheel apparatus to characterize the time response of a nitric oxide detector is described. At low chopping rates, fast Fourier transform analysis of the output signal indicates that the instrument has a response time of about 0.45+/-0.14 s with respect to a periodic input signal. This detector has an "e-folding" response time of about 0.3+/-0.1 s to a simple step change in input signal, demonstrating reasonable agreement within experimental uncertainty between the two techniques.