Patent ID: 7342229

Claim:
A method of determining a presence of a chemical species in a mixture of gasses, comprising: introducing the mixture of gasses into a sample cell; irradiating the mixture of gasses in the sample cell with a submillimeter wave that sweeps a predetermined frequency band; generating a submillimeter spectrum of the mixture of gasses; providing a standard submillimeter spectrum of the chemical species that is obtained from the chemical species of a pure form; selecting a first peak of the standard submillimeter spectrum of the chemical species; determining whether the selected first peak is present in the generated submillimeter spectrum of the mixture of gasses; and identifying a component of the mixture of gasses by providing additional standard submillimeter spectra of other chemical species and determining the presence of the first peaks of the corresponding standard submillimeter spectra until at least one of the first peaks is determined to be present or absent in the corresponding spectrum.