Recognition of olive oils by means of an integrated sol-gel SnO2 electronic nose

In this paper, we report a specific application of a semiconductor thin
films based sensor array for the discrimination of different olive oils.
The active elements of the sensor array were undoped and Ni, Pd, Pt,
Os-doped SnO2 thin films prepared by sol–gel technique. Olive oil samples
were randomly selected. They included commercial olive oils of different
qualities (extra-virgin, virgin and husk oils) and non-commercial local
olive oils (deriving from different zone of the Salento region in Apulia)
with different degrees of acidity. The sensor array coupled with a
principal component analysis allows discrimination between different olive
oils. In particular good separation between commercial and local products
was obtained.