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Sniffing out a better chemical sensor
Date:10/29/2008

Marrying a sensitive detector technology capable of distinguishing hundreds of different chemical compounds with a pattern-recognition module that mimics the way animals recognize odors, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new approach for electronic noses. Described in a recent paper,* their electronic nose is more adept than conventional methodologies at recognizing molecular features even for chemicals it has not been trained to detect and is also robust enough to deal with changes in sensor response that come with wear and tear. The detector could be a potent tool for applications such as sniffing out nerve agents, environmental contaminants, and trace indicators of disease, in addition to monitoring industrial processes and aiding in space exploration.

In animals, odorant molecules in the air enter the nostrils and bind with sensory neurons in the nose that convert the chemical interactions into an electrical signal that the brain interprets as a smell. In humans, there are about 350 types of sensory neurons and many copies of each type; dogs and mice have several hundreds more types of sensory neurons than that. Odor recognition proceeds in a step-by-step fashion where the chemical identity is gradually resolved: initial coarse information (e.g. ice-cream is fruit-flavored vs. chocolate) is refined over time to allow finer discrimination (strawberry vs. raspberry). This biological approach inspired the researchers to develop a parallel divide and conquer method for use with the electronic nose.

The technology is based on interactions between chemical species and semiconducting sensing materials placed on top of MEMS microheater platforms developed at NIST. (See NIST Microhotplate May Help Search for Extraterrestrial Life, NIST Tech Beat, Oct., 2001.) The electronic nose employed in the current work is comprised of eight types of sensors in the form of oxide films deposited on t
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Contact: Mark Esser
mark.esser@nist.gov
301-975-8735
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Source:Eurekalert  

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