| Olfaction today has many applications not only for an individual's life but also for the industries. Applications include food product quality control, safety and security, environmental monitoring, indoor air quality, health care, medical diagnosis, pharmaceutical purposes, and military applications. In these applications human olfaction is still the primary instrument. This is a costly process since trained experts are required who can only work for relatively short periods of time, not mentioning fatigue, mental state, subjectivity, and the danger being exposed to hazardous chemicals. Therefore using machine olfaction to perform the task would be a significant advance. Many researchers have investigated electronic noses, but currently only relatively large “instrument” electronic noses have been built. We have designed an integrated electronic nose on a single silicon chip. A carbon black-organic polymer sensor array used for the electronic nose chip is introduced first, then circuits which perform signal adaption, signal processing, and odor classification are discussed. Experimental data for the electronic nose chip, including power dissipation, temperature dependence, response to chemical mixtures, minimum detection level, and longitudinal tests is presented at the end of the dissertation. |
