Application of novel sensor electronics for quartz resonators in artificial tongue

Many applications in environmental analysis, chemical or food industry require special sensors for qualitative and/or quantitative detection of substances in gaseous atmosphere or liquids. Sometimes the measuring task is a distinction of different typical odours or flavours of a complex medium. For that an electronic nose or tongue emulating the human sense organs could be useful in future. The performance of such devices is determined by sensor characteristics such as sensitivity, selectivity or long term stability and a powerful data acquisition and evaluation. An electronic tongue consisting of quartz crystal microbalance sensors is presented in this paper. The newly developed sensor electronics determine additional sensor parameters in comparison to the normally used resonance frequency. These parameters help to distinguish between gravimetric and non-gravimetric effects. Furthermore the additional information content gives better results of pattern recognition using sensor arrays for analyte detection.