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EE0242

Electronic Nose (E-Nose) using Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS).

1SHASHANK

KANNA

2JAYADEV

SAI SRAVAN

Abstract:
Many of us spend just as much time in cyber space touring the electronic landscapes of the Internet as we spend offline. But for all of the time that we spend in front of our computer monitors, this virtual world lacks many of the real worlds most precious attributes. One of the biggest drawbacks of the cyber world is its lack of realism [2]. Most of us are born with five senses, allowing us to see, hear, touch, smell and taste [3]. Yet, the Internet takes advantage of less than half of these. When we log onto our computers, sight is probably the most obvious of the senses you see to collect information. The Internet is almost completely vision-based. While audio technologies like mp3 are also popular, but Internet is made up of words and pictures. You can also throw in touch as the third sense in computer interaction, but that is mostly in terms of interfacing by way of keyboard and mouse [2]. Since the beginning of Internet, software developers have chosen to ignore our senses of smell and taste. However, there are at least some research works planning to awaken all our senses by bringing digital odours to the Internet.

Key words:
Electronic landscapes, Electronic/artificial noses, Artificial odour detectors, E-noses, Sensors built with micro electromechanical system, Artificial neutral networks.

Conclusion:
E-nose is already available in the market. The two main manufacturers are EST and Cyrano Sciences, both USA based companies. Taking e0noses a step further, illumine, another USA based company is working on optical nose. Meanwhile Caltechs ERC are working on the computer design of the nose. The completed sniffer will be made up of 10,000 sensors and fit on a 1cm2 chip. Eventually, many questions concerning the human olfactory system will be answered and perhaps artificial solutions will be found for people with olfactory problems.

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1.III Year EIE Hi-Tech College of Engg & Tech shashank_yoo@yahoo.co.in 2.III Year EIE Hi-Tech College of Engg & Tech dev.dude@yahoo.com

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1. Introduction
Electronic/artificial noses are being developed as systems for the automated detection and classification of odours, vapors, and gases. An electronic nose is generally composed of a chemical sensing system (e.g., sensor array or spectrometer) and a pattern recognition system (e.g., artificial neural network). This Paper proposes developing electronic noses for the automated identification of volatile chemicals for environmental and medical applications. In this paper, I briefly describe an electronic nose, show some results from a prototype electronic nose, and discuss applications of electronic noses in the defense, commercial, environmental, medical and food industries.

Artificial odour detectors have been built since the 1950s but without much success. In the past few years, progression in chip technology and pattern recognition has made electronic noses available for use in many different areas, from pollution detection to food processing. The Institute of Olfactory Research at Warwick University developed the first prototype of electronic nose in the mid-80s. An Electronic nose is a device used to analyze the content of air through the classification of odours. Although the electronic noses in use today are far from replacing the human olfactory system, the possible uses for this technology are endless. Human noses are employed all over the world to test different products such as grains, wines, cheeses, whiskey and fish are examined by human noses to determine their quality and freshness. Perfumes and deodorants are also tested to see whether they are appealing to the nose. The sense of smell is even used by doctors to help classify common disorders. Certain problems such as pneumonia or diabetes give patients breath and bodily fluids characteristic odours that can be noticed by a trained nose. An electronic nose could be employed to do the same job with more possibilities.

2. How an e-nose works?

The two main components of an electronic nose are the sensing system and the automated pattern recognition system. The sensing system can be an array of several different sensing elements (e.g., chemical sensors), where each element measures a different property of the sensed chemical, or it can be a single sensing device (e.g., spectrometer) that produces an array of measurements for each chemical, or it can be a combination. Each chemical vapor presented to the sensor array produces a signature or pattern characteristic of the vapor. By presenting many different chemicals to the sensor array, a database of signatures is built up. This database of labeled signatures is used to train the pattern recognition system. The goal of this training process is to configure the recognition system to produce unique classifications of each chemical so that an automated identification can be implemented. The e-noses work on the same principle as the human nose. Humans detect odours using up to 650 types of receptors found on cells high in the nasal passages. Scientists are still not sure how the human nose processes smells but its known that the receptors generate smell prints of odours they receive, which then passes on this information to the brain. With e-noses, the process is same but sensors take the place of human cell receptors and a microprocessor takes the place of the brain. The e-nose also creates smell prints of the odours it receives, which are then stored

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in a database. If it receives the same imprint in the future, it will recognize that odour from its database and inform the user of the smell. The quantity and complexity of the data collected by sensors array can make conventional chemical analysis of data in an automated fashion difficult. One approach to chemical vapor identification is to build an array of sensors, where each sensor in the array is designed to respond to a specific chemical. With this approach, the number of unique sensors must be at least as great as the number of chemicals being monitored. It is both expensive and difficult to build highly selective chemical sensors. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), which have been used to analyze complex data and to recognize patterns, are showing promising results in chemical vapor recognition. When an ANN is combined with a sensor array, the number of detectable chemicals is generally greater than the number of sensors. Also, less selective sensors which are generally less expensive can be used with this approach. The sensors basically measure the change in voltage due to presence of certain chemicals. The chemicals in the air change the oxygen content over the sensors. Change in the oxygen content changes the resistance across the sensor, which can be measured as a voltage drop from the normal or standardized conditions. This analog signal must be translated into a digital signal by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for the computer to understand the information. The number of odour signatures the system can recognize depends on the number of sensors used and the grey levels in the converter. Electronic noses that incorporate ANNs have been demonstrated in various applications. Some of these applications will be discussed later in the paper. Many ANN configurations and training algorithms have been used to build electronic noses.

2.1. Sensors built with Micro Electro Mechanical Systems.

In less than 20 years, MEMS (micro electro-mechanical systems) technology has gone from an interesting academic exercise to an integral part of many common products. But as with most new technologies, the practical implementation of MEMS technology has taken a while to happen [11]. The sensors are conductive polymer carbon black composite films, which swell reversibly and induce a resistance change upon exposure to a wide variety of gases. The ability to monitor and detect various gases is important for many applications. Monitoring and determining the constituents of a sample gas typically involves collecting samples and analyzing them in a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) of significant size and cost Although GC-MS systems work very well, many applications need sensor systems that are smaller, more portable, cheaper, and even disposable. Conductive polymer carbon black composite films have been used as a sensing medium in several gas sensors or electronic noses [1,2,3]. These composite films swell reversibly when exposed to various gases. This swelling induces a resistance change in the composite film, which can be measured when the film is deposited across two metal leads. Compared to conventional chemical sensors, which uses a specific receptor that selectively responds to a single analyte of interest [2], the polymer composite film is not specific to any one particular gas. However, when it is used in an array, with each sensor containing a different polymer composite film, gases and gas mixtures can be identified by the pattern of response of the array. This allows a much more general-purpose chemical gas sensor capable of broadly detecting and identifying various constituents. These polymers carbon black composite films have been deposited on co-fired ceramic substrates [1], glass slides [2], and on silicon [3]. Most of these sensors have large-area composite film deposits (>mm2). During deposition, the composite film is dissolved into a solvent mixture, which evaporates and leaves behind the thin sensing film. Using micromachining technology, we have been able to develop smaller polymer-based chemical

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gas sensor arrays on silicon. Specifically, we have designed micromachined reservoirs or wells to contain the large liquid volume present during deposition. The well allows the polymer carbon black film to be placed reproducibly in a specific and well-constrained area. The 3-dimensional structure of the well can also afford a larger exposure area for sensing while still minimizing the chip area used by each element of the array. These wells can be post processed onto silicon CMOS chips, which would allow for integration of on-chip electronics for measurement, signal processing, and analysis. The well sizes that we have fabricated and tested are 500500 m, 250250 m, and 100100 m.

3. What is an Artificial Neural Network (ANN)?

An artificial neural network is an information-processing paradigm inspired by the way biological nervous systems, such as the brain, process information. It has a large number of highly interconnected processing elements (neurons) working in unison to solve specific problems. Like Humans, ANNs learn by example. An ANN is configured for an application such as identifying chemicals vapors through a learning process. Learning in biological systems involves adjustments to the synaptic connections. This is true of ANNs as well. For the electronic nose, the ANN learns to identify the various chemicals or odours by example. ANNs have been applied to an increasing number of real-world problems of considerable complexity. These can solve problems that are too complex for conventional technologies i.e. problems that do not have an algorithmic solution or for which an algorithmic solution is too complex to be found. In general, because of their abstraction from the biological brain, ANNs are well suited to problems that people are good at solving but computers are not; for example, pattern recognition and forecasting. However, unlike the humans, the pattern recognition capability of ANNs is not affected by fatigue, working conditions, emotional state and compensation.

4. Prototype Electronic Nose

A Prototype electronic nose, shown 1inFigure, is composed of an array of tin-oxide vapor sensors, a humidity

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sensor, and a temperature sensor coupled with an ANN. During operation a chemical vapor is blown across the array, the sensor signals are digitized and fed into the computer, and the ANN (implemented in software) then identifies the chemical. This identification time is limited only by the response time of the chemical sensors, which is in order of seconds. This prototype nose has been to identify common household chemicals by their odour. The tin-oxide sensors are commercially available sensors. Although each sensor is designed for a specific chemical, each responds to a wide variety of chemicals. Collectively, theses sensors respond with unique signatures (patterns) to different chemicals. During the training process, various chemicals with known mixture are presented to the system. By training on samples of various chemicals, the ANN learns to recognize the different chemicals. Gas sensors tend to have very broad selectivity, responding to many different substances. This is a disadvantage in most applications, but in electronic nose, but is a definite advantage. Although every sensor in an array may respond to a given chemical, theses responses will usually be different. This prototype nose has been tested on a variety of household and office supply chemicals including acetone, ammonia, ethanol, glass cleaner, contact cement, correction fluid, iso-propanol, lighter fluid, methanol, rubber cement and vinegar. For results shown in paper, three of these chemicals were used: acetone, benzene and chloroform. The figure illustrates the responses of the sensors numbered from 1 to 9 for a variety of test chemical presented to the ANNs. The ANN was able to correctly classify the test samples with only small residual errors. From the responses of the sensors to the analysis, one can easily see that the individual sensors in the array are not selective. In addition, when a mixture of two or more chemicals is presented to the sensor array, the resultant pattern (sensor values) may be even harder to analyze. Thus, analyzing the sensor responses separately may not be adequate to yield the classification accuracy achieved by analyzing the data in parallel.

5. Applications 5.1. Electronic Noses for Environmental Monitoring.

Enormous amounts of hazardous waste (nuclear, chemical, and mixed wastes) were generated by more than 40 years of weapons production in the U.S. Department of Energys Weapons Complex. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is exploring the technologies required to perform environmental restoration and waste management in a cost effective manner. This effort includes the development of portable, inexpensive systems capable of real-time identification of contaminants in the field. Electronic noses fit this category (As part of this effort, ANNs are being combined with chemical sensor arrays and spectrometers for use in prototype electronic noses). Environmental applications of Electronic noses include analysis of fuel mixtures, detection of oil leaks, testing ground water for odours, and identification of household odours. Potential applications include identification of toxic wastes, air quality monitoring and monitoring factory emissions.

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5.2. Electronic Noses for Medicine

Because the sense of smell is an important sense to the physician, an electronic nose has applicability as a diagnostic tool. An electronic nose can examine odours from the body (e.g., breath, wounds, body fluids, etc) and identify possible problems. Odours in the breath can be indicative of gastrointestinal problems, sinus problems, infections, diabetes, and liver problems. Infected wounds and tissues emit distinctive odours that can be detected by an electronic nose for examining wound infections is being tested at South Manchester University Hospital. A More futuristic application of electronic noses has been recently proposed for tele-surgery. While the inclusion of visual, aural, and tactile senses into tele-present systems is widespread, the sense of smell has been largely ignored. An electronic nose will potentially be a key component in an olfactory input to tele-present virtual reality systems including tele-surgery. The electronic nose would identify odours in the remote surgical environment. These identified odours would be electronically transmitted to another site where an odour generation system would recreate them.

5.3. Electronic Noses for the Food Industry.

Currently, the biggest market for electronic noses is the food industry. Applications of electronic noses in the food industry include quality assessment in food production, inspection of food quality by odour, control of food cooking processes, inspection of fish, monitoring the fermentation process, checking rancidity of mayonnaise, verifying if orange juice is natural, monitoring food and beverage odours, grading whisky, inspection of beverage containers, checking plastic wrap for containment of onion odour, and automated flavor control to name a few. In some instances electronic noses can be used to augment or replace panels of human experts. In other cases, electronic noses can be used to reduce the amount of analytical chemistry that is performed in food production especially when qualitative results will do. A number of potential applications of the electronic nose in food industry have been reported, such as for quality estimation of ground meat (Winquist et al., 1993), detection of boar taint in meat (Bourrounet et al., 1995), detection of gender differences in meat products (Berdague and Talou, 1993), estimation of fish freshness (Scweizer-Berberich et al., 1994. Winquist et al., 1995), evaluation of shelf life of fresh vegetables (Riva et al., 2001), to follow beer production (Pearce et al., 2003) and to predict the degree of mouldy/musty odour in cereal (Borjesson et al., 1996).

5.5. Electronic Noses for Business and other applications.

In the future, bomb squads wont need dogs. Theyll have electronic sniffers to find explosives. The portable noses will also uncover sub-standard food, and sound an alarm if a cars brake fluid smells deficient. Working with Caltechs center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering, an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC), Researchers say that this new approach to artificial olfactory sensing. Most other chemical sensors are keyed to specific chemicals. When those chemicals are absent, the noses dont work. The Caltech nose however will learn, like a dog, it will memorize scents and react to something it hasnt smelled before. This versatility intrigues NASA. No one knows what new gas may appear inside the pace shuttle, but the Caltech nose could learn what the spacecraft smells like under normal conditions, and then ring a bell if the odours change.

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Perfume makers are already using nose-machines to protect their patented smells against fake-fragrance merchants. Inspectors are using high-tech snout to resolve disputes with fishermen over grading of their catch. More exciting are the possible medical applications: Warwick University scientists are researching the use of electronic noses to diagnose illness by smelling patients breath, and have recently been awarded a grant from the European Union (EU) to investigate the possibility of installing tiny electronic nose in phone receivers, so patients can simply breathe into the phone and wait for diagnosis. A similar smell-transmission device may soon allow surfers on the internet to wake up and smell the coffee quite literally. Researchers are investigating the use of breath analysis to identify the stages of female menstrual cycle: the ability of electronic noses to detect ovulation could benefit both fertility and birth control. Our unique body odour may become an alternative form of identification, signaling the end of credit card fraud, forgotten or misappropriated personal identification number (PIN), fake ID cards, etc. The association for payment clearing services, an organization set up to find solutions to these problems, is investigating the use of electronic nose in banks, and companies may soon be able to replace security entry systems involving cards and codes with a device that recognizes each employees personal odour.

5.4. E-mail the Smells.

In Oakland, California, DigiScents Inc. is developing a device called iSmell that transmits digitized smells through your computer. The prototype of the iSmell personal scent synthesizer will connect to your PC through a Serial or Universal Serial Bus (USB) port. It can be plugged into any ordinary electrical outlet. Heres how it works: DigiScents prepares an index of thousands of smells based on their chemical structure and their place on the smell spectrum. Each scent is then coded and digitized into a small file. The digital file is embedded in web content or e-mail. When a user requests or triggers the file by clicking or opening the e-mail, a small amount of the aroma is emitted by the device in the direct vicinity of the user. The iSmell can create thousands of everyday scents with a small cartridge that contains 128 primary odours. These primary odours are mixed together to generate other smells that closely replicate common natural and manmade odours. The scent cartridge, like a printers toner cartridge, will have to be replaced periodically to maintain the scent accuracy. DigiScents has partnered with several Web, Interactive Media and gaming companies to bring scents to your computer. Real Networks plans to make DigiScents Scentstream software available to its more than 115 million RealPlayer users.

5.5. Print Flavors

TriSenx is planning to take you one step further by allowing you to not only download scents but also print flavors that can be tasted. It has developed a technology that allows users to print smells onto thick fiber-paper sheets and taste specific flavors by licking the paper coated with the smell. The SENX is a printer like desktop device that will produce smells based on data programmed into Webpage. The fragrances and aromas are stored in a disposable cartridge within the SENX. This cartridge has 20 chambers, each holding a distinct scent. Thousands of smells can be created with a 20 chamber cartridge. The SENX measures 14x20x6.4 cm and is powered by a 6V DC rechargeable battery. It plugs into the open external COM port on your computer.

5.6. Using E-Smells.

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You will be able to do more than attach e-smells. Imagine watching The Patriot on your DVD player with DigiScents device plugged into it: as the Colonial armys cannons blast, you can smell the gunpowder. The whole idea here is to increase the realism and enhance the viewing of your favorite movies. The same type of effect could be created for your favorite video games. While consoles like PlayStation3 are designed to enhance realism of video game graphics, a digital scent synthesizer could take games to a whole new level. Imagine smelling the bad guy who is approaching before you actually see him. Developers of racing games could embed the smell of burnt rubber or gasoline to make their games more realistic. Before being attached to movies and games, Internet odours are likely to permeate through Internet Advertising. Advertisers can use novelty of digital scents to peddle their products now. Coca-Cola could embed their cola smell into banner ads, which could be triggered by a user scrolling over the ad. Consumers may also benefit from this aromatic technology. With online spending on the rise, shoppers will be able to sample some goods that they buy including flowers, candy, coffee and other food products.

6. Key Benefits.
The Electronic noses available so far are not as sensitive as human nose, but these offer significant advantages: These do not get bored with repetitive smelling tasks, or de-sensitized through habituation to particular odours. Unpleasant smells such as industrial chemicals and sewage do not make electronic sniffers feel sick, and their performance on smelling tasks does not fluctuate according to mood, hormonal cycles or other unpredictable human factors. For most tasks, one of the main advantages of electronic noses is their lack of emotional response to odours, although in future high-tech noses may be developed that mimic human emotions (perhaps for perfume makers to test the effects their products). One of the many problems with using the human olfactory system as a tool is that it is extremely subjective. Different people are affected in different ways by similar odours. An electronic nose could solve this problem by setting standard for certain smells. Another problem that electronic nose could solve is the health risk associated with smelling certain chemicals. The toxicity of certain chemicals could prove harmful to those who try determining an odour using their nose. In addition electronic noses could be taken into areas of extreme temperatures, inside the body, oil rigs, gasoline tanks or sewer systems, or even another planet. However, e-noses dont come without disadvantage. First, these are temperature-sensitive an increase or decrease in the temperature lessens their effect. The atmospheric moisture and humidity also result in improper working of the e-nose.

8. References.
[1] Berdague J.L., Talou T. Examples of semiconductor gas sensors applied to meat products , Sci.Aliments 13, 141148, 1993. [2] Borjesson T., Eklov T., Jonsson A., Sundgren H., Schnurer J. Electronic nose for odor classification of grains, Cereal Chem. 73, 457461, 1996. [3] Bourrounet B., Talou T., Gaset A. Application of a multi gas-sensor device in the meat industry for boar-taint detection, Sensors Actuat. B 26,250254, 1995.

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[4] Gardner J.W. Detection of vapours and odours from a multi sensor array using pattern recognition, B 4, 108116, 1991. [5] Gardner J.W., Hines E.L., Wilkinson M. (1990) The application of artificial neural networks in an electronic nose, Meas. Sci. Technol. 1, 446451, 1991. [6] Holmberg M., Winquist F., Lundstrom I., Gardner J.W., Hines E.L. Identification of paper quality using a hybrid electronic nose , Sensors Actuators. B 27, 246 249, 1995. [7] Pearce T.C., Gardner J.W., Friel S., Barlett P.N., Blair N. Electronic nose for monitoring the flavor of beers , Analyst 118, 371377, 1993. [8] Riva M., Benedetti S., Mannino S. Shelf life of fresh cut vegetables as measured by an electronic nose: preliminary study, Ital. J. Food Sci. 13, 201211, 1993. [9] Schaller E., Bosset J.O., Escher F., Practical experience with the electronic nose systems for monitoring the quality of dairy products, Chimia 53, 98102, 1999. [10] Winquist F., Hornsten E.G., Sundgren H., Lundstrom I. Performance of an electronic nose for quality estimation of ground meat, Meat Sci. Technol. 4, 14931500, 1993. [11] Frank Zee and Jack Judy, MEMS CHEMICAL GAS SENSOR USING A POLYMER-BASED ARRAY, Published at Transducers 99 - The 10th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors and Actuators on June 7-10, 1999 in Sendai, Japan. [12] Gardner, J.W.Gardner, Julian W.; Bartlett, Philip N., Electronic Noses: Principles and Applications .