VERSATILE MICROCONTROLLED GAS SENSOR ARRAY SYSTEM USING THE QUARTZ MICROBALANCE PRINCIPLE AND PATTERN-RECOGNITION METHODS

A new gas sensor array system for the detection of special gases or solvent vapours using the microbalance principle is presented. Different coatings (e.g. polymers, cage structures, self-assembled monolayers) as sensitive materials on the quartz surface allow the sensor array configuration. This gas analyzer system and the knowledge of effective chemical sensitive coatings open a great variety of special application cases, e.g. in the environmental and chemical industry or biotechnology. After a short discussion of the theoretical background, experimental results with calixarene coated quartzes and the first results with a gas chromatographic column are shown. Finally a brief description of investigations with pattern recognition methods using the principal component analysis and neural networks is given.