Controlling fluidic behavior for ultra-sensitive volatile sensing

Abstract

Volatile organic compounds detection technology, electronic nose, is promising in various applications such as health management, environmental monitoring, public safety, agriculture, and food production. The critical point of electronic nose to achieve good recognition ability, the fundament for applications, is the generation of high-quality signal characteristics that are transduced from each sensor unit, and aided with algorithm. However, chamber without uniform fluidic state introduce sensors' locations caused artificial characteristics to make the recognition difficult, even incredible. Inspired by the structure of the nasal cavity, a small volume chamber with well-controlled fluidic behavior is designed and fabricated according to theoretical simulation. All the expected fluidic features, including uniform flow field and concentration field, are achieved, which are experimentally demonstrated by humidity and 2-hexanone detection using sensors arrays. The well controlled fluidic behaviors of volatile analytes help achieving the ultra-sensitive volatile organic compounds detection, which might shed a new light for e-nose technology to go over the gap between academics and industry.