Sensors and Microsystems: Electronic Nose

Abstract

This Chapter has two purposes: The first purpose is to illustrate in some detail a design of an advanced chemical microsystem, also called a micro total analysis system (μTAS) ¹ which can use either surface acoustic wave or optical chemical sensors in the test chamber, and which can be fabricated by silicon micromachining technology and semiconductor-glass bonding techniques; this μTAS can acquire data from chemically sensitive devices located in an ambient fluid, transform them in a suitable format for further signal processing and perform internal flow management and control; The second purpose is to present and discuss the Rome Tor Vergata electronic nose (EN), applied as an example in this paper to food analysis, using quartz micro balance (QMB) sensors and metallo-porphyrines as promising chemically interactive materials (CIM’s). The current study on QMB sensor matrices is considered and oriented to achieve all the necessary information for the development of the more advanced μTAS introduced above.