Large Scale Chemical Sensor Arrays for Machine Olfaction

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the fabrication of a large-scale chemical sensor array. There are three main classes of common sensor technologies such as metal-oxide gas sensors, piezoelectric sensors, and conducting polymer sensors that have been largely used in the electronic noses, and most of the commercial artificial systems. Conducting polymers sensors are discussed in detail. In fact, because of their features, they were considered the best option for building a unique artificial olfactory system able to mimic the biological system. The chapter deals with intrinsic conducting polymers that are doped with an electron-donating (p-type) or electron- withdrawing (n-type) species. The large-scale sensor array was built with the aim of mimicking the olfactory receptor neuron (ORNs) and generating real sensory inputs to be analyzed by algorithms directly abstracted from neuroscience models.