Natural and Artificial Olfaction

In the last decade much effort has been oriented to the fabrication of artificial olfaction machines able to determine chemical images (also odor images) of complex volatile compounds. Today many different electronic noses and tongues are available for odor detection and classification and for the creation of chemical images of liquids. 

These systems are formed by a number of cooperating individual non-selective sensors, whose outputs are processed to form chemical images or, in the presence of odors, olfactory images. 

Varieties of polymers are also employed as sensitive material for electronic nose applications, and the operating temperature may reach about 100 ° C. In the case of quartz microbalance-based sensors a large role is played by the chemically interactive material (CIM) on which it is deposited. A rather efficient room temperature operating CIM is the metal-porphirin, by which it is possible to construct varieties of nostrils, just changing the type of coordinated metal. Interesting metals success- 

Future perspectives for the electronic nose research field are listed below. They concern both expected sensing and technical sensing and performance. Improvement of sensing performance of the instrument  

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