A Barcoded Polymer-Based Cross-Reactive Spectroscopic Sensor Array for Organic Volatiles.

Jessica E Fitzgerald,Jianliang Shen,Hicham Fenniri

doi:10.3390/s19173683

Abstract

The development of cross-reactive sensor arrays for volatile organics (electronic noses, e-noses) is an active area of research. In this manuscript, we present a new format for barcoded polymer sensor arrays based on porous polymer beads. An array of nine self-encoded polymers was analyzed by Raman spectroscopy before and after exposure to a series of volatile organic compounds, and the changes in the vibrational fingerprints of their polymers was recorded before and after exposure. Our results show that the spectroscopic changes experienced by the porous spectroscopically encoded beads after exposure to an analyte can be used to identify and classify the target analytes. To expedite this analysis, analyte-specific changes induced in the sensor arrays were transformed into a response pattern using multivariate data analysis. These studies established the barcoded bead array format as a potentially effective sensing element in e-nose devices. Devices such as these have the potential to advance personalized medicine, providing a platform for non-invasive, real-time volatile metabolite detection.

Highlights

The design of artificial devices and systems using biomimetic engineering concepts emerged over three decades ago [1,2,3,4]
Gardner and Bartlett defined an e-nose as a device composed of (a) an array of semi-selective sensing elements with a broad spectrum of specificities to a target analyte and (b) a pattern recognition system, capable of processing complex and often convoluted signal outputs and identifying unique pattern characteristic of a given analyte [5]
Each sensing element could interact with several analytes with varying degrees of affinity, thereby resulting in a unique response pattern characteristic of the target analyte [6]

Summary

Introduction

The design of artificial devices and systems using biomimetic engineering concepts emerged over three decades ago [1,2,3,4]. Gardner and Bartlett defined an e-nose as a device composed of (a) an array of semi-selective sensing elements with a broad spectrum of specificities to a target analyte and (b) a pattern recognition system, capable of processing complex and often convoluted signal outputs and identifying unique pattern characteristic of a given analyte [5]. This technology platform was applied, for example, in the food industry [7,8,9], environmental monitoring [10], diagnostics [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22], and public safety [23]. The resulting pattern of the cross-reactive sensor array (CRSA) can be used to classify and quantify the analyte of concern [6,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31]

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion