Carbon SH-SAW-Based Electronic Nose to Discriminate and Classify Sub-ppm NO 2 .

In this research, a compact electronic nose (e-nose) based on a shear horizontal surface acoustic wave (SH-SAW) sensor array is proposed for the NO 2 detection, classification and discrimination among some of the most relevant surrounding toxic chemicals, such as carbon monoxide (CO), ammonia (NH 3 ), benzene (C 6 H 6 ) and acetone (C 3 H 6 O). Carbon-based nanostructured materials (CBNm), such as mesoporous carbon (MC), reduced graphene oxide (rGO), graphene oxide (GO) and polydopamine/reduced graphene oxide (PDA/rGO) are deposited as a sensitive layer with controlled spray and Langmuir-Blodgett techniques. We show the potential of the mass loading and elastic effects of the CBNm to enhance the detection, the classification and the discrimination of NO 2 among different gases by using Machine Learning (ML) techniques (e.g., PCA, LDA and KNN). The small dimensions and low cost make this analytical system a promising candidate for the on-site discrimination of sub-ppm NO 2 .