Very large chemical sensor array for mimicking biological olfaction

Olfactory receptor neurons (ORN) in the mammalian olfactory system, transduce molecular properties of the odorants into electrical signals and project these into the olfactory bulb (OB). In the biological system several millions of receptor neurons of a few hundred types create redundancy and the massive convergence of the ORNs to the OB, is thought to enhance the sensitivity and selectivity of the system. To explore this concept, the NEUROCHEM project will build a polymeric chemical sensor array consisting of 2 16 (65536) sensors with tens of different types. To interface such a large sensor array, a topological array configuration with n rows and m columns, has been adopted, to reduce the total wiring connections to n+m. A method of addressing a single element in the array in isolation of the rest of the network has been developed. Over the array ten different conductive polymers with different sensing characteristics will be deposited by means of electrodeposition and inkjet printing. A smaller prototype of 64 elements has been investigated and the results are here reported and discussed. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.