Development of Diamond and Silicon MEMS Sensor Arrays with Integrated Readout for Vapor Detection.

Maira Possas-Abreu,Maira Possas-Abreu,Maira Possas-Abreu,Maira Possas-Abreu,Farbod Ghassemi,Farbod Ghassemi,Emilie Descours,Gaelle Lissorgues,Farbod Ghassemi,Lionel Rousseau,Lionel Rousseau,Lionel Rousseau,Lionel Rousseau,Farbod Ghassemi,Emmanuel Scorsone,Emmanuel Scorsone

doi:10.3390/s17061163

Abstract

This paper reports on the development of an autonomous instrument based on an array of eight resonant microcantilevers for vapor detection. The fabricated sensors are label-free devices, allowing chemical and biological functionalization. In this work, sensors based on an array of silicon and synthetic diamond microcantilevers are sensitized with polymeric films for the detection of analytes. The main advantage of the proposed system is that sensors can be easily changed for another application or for cleaning since the developed gas cell presents removable electrical connections. We report the successful application of our electronic nose approach to detect 12 volatile organic compounds. Moreover, the response pattern of the cantilever arrays is interpreted via principal component analysis (PCA) techniques in order to identify samples.

Highlights

A recent study revealed that humans can discriminate among more than a trillion different smells [1] and the mammalian nose remains the primary “apparatus” used in many applications to evaluate the smell of products
The first study in this field [10] reported that a system aiming to mimic the mammalian olfactory system may be composed of two main elements: roughly tuned receptor cells, not selective toward specific odorant molecules and a system capable of performing parallel processing of the output signals
Considering the frequency shift as the system output signal, the signal-to-noise ratio will depend on the sensitive layer and the substance to be detected

Summary

Introduction

A recent study revealed that humans can discriminate among more than a trillion different smells [1] and the mammalian nose remains the primary “apparatus” used in many applications to evaluate the smell of products. Driven by the needs of odour detection for medical applications, environmental monitoring, security or food monitoring, the development of electronic noses has increased over the years [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. These sensing technologies operate by mimicking the manner that mammalian noses proceed to discriminate odorant volatile compounds. Various electronic noses have been developed based on different sensor technologies and different identification and classification methods [11]

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Results

Conclusion