Abstract
An electronic tongue for the qualitative analysis of aqueous solutions of salts hasbeen developed. The following set of electrodes was used: RuO2, Ag, and Cu in thick-filmtechnology and Au, Pb, Zn and Ni as small bars of the corresponding metal. The response ofthe designed “electronic tongue” was tested on a family of samples containing pure salt andcomplex mixtures. The electrodes were used as potentiometric un-specific sensors and thee.m.f. of each electrode in contact with a certain aqueous solution was used as input signalfor a PCA analysis. The study showed that the set of electrodes were capable to discriminatebetween aqueous solutions of salts basically by their different content in anions and cations(the anions SO42-, Cl-, PO4H2-, CO3H-, NO3- and cations Na+ and K+ were studied). In orderto better analyze the basis for the discrimination power shown by the electronic tongue, aquantitative analysis was also envisaged. A fair estimation of the concentrations of thedifferent ions in the solutions studied appeared to be possible using this electronic tonguedesign.Keywords:
Highlights
Potentiometric techniques are well-known, simple and versatile methods in analytical chemistry and several examples of electronic tongues based on potentiometric measurements have been reported [1] most of them having in common the use of membrane potentiometric electrodes [2]
As an alternative approach to the use of membranebased electrodes we have developed recently an electronic tongue that used simple non-coated surfaces as unspecific sensors [3,4,5] for the differentiation of somewhat similar water samples using potentiometric measurements combined with principal component analysis (PCA) algorithms and a fuzzy ARTMAP neural network
The samples have been studied by using an array of potentiometric electrodes in thick-film technology; the printed electrodes consisted in the following components: RuO2, Ag, and Cu
Summary
Potentiometric techniques are well-known, simple and versatile methods in analytical chemistry and several examples of electronic tongues based on potentiometric measurements have been reported [1] most of them having in common the use of membrane potentiometric electrodes [2] These membranes can be of different materials and usually display certain selectivity toward particular chemical species. We believe that the use of these systems might be a promising sensing approach due to the large number of available possibilities to tune the composition of the final sensor array that might result in controlling the response to different complex liquid mixtures As it has been reported, in the electronic tongue approach, the strategy is not to measure single chemical components but to get images of more complex attributes (i.e. waters differentiation) via the use of a set of rather unspecific sensors. The set of electrodes respond differentially to the ion content in the solutions
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