Single Nanowire Gas Sensor Able to Distinguish Fish and Meat and Evaluate Their Degree of Freshness

Abstract

A non-invasive, small, and fast device is needed for food freshness monitoring, as current techniques do not meet these criteria. In this study, a resistive sensor composed of a single semiconductor nanowire was used at different temperatures, combining the responses and processing them with multivariate statistical analysis techniques. The sensor, very sensitive to ammonia and total volatile basic nitrogen, proved to be able to distinguish samples of fish (marble trout, Salmo trutta marmoratus) and meat (pork, Sus scrofa domesticus), both stored at room temperature and 4 °C in the refrigerator. Once separated, the fish and meat samples were classified by the degree of freshness/degradation with two different classifiers. The sensor classified the samples (trout and pork) correctly in 95.2% of cases. The degree of freshness was correctly assessed in 90.5% of cases. Considering only the errors with repercussions (when a fresh sample was evaluated as degraded, or a degraded sample was evaluated as edible) the accuracy increased to 95.2%. Considering the size (less than a square millimeter) and the speed (less than a minute), this type of sensor could be used to monitor food production and distribution chains.

Metal–oxide–semiconductor resistive gas sensors for fish freshness detection

“…used single tin oxide nanowires as gas‐sensing material to detect 0.1–5 ppm NH 3 at different working temperatures (200–360°C). The fabricated resistive SnO 2 sensor was used to nondestructively test the freshness of trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ), mackerel fish ( Scomber scombrus ), and Salmo trutta marmoratus (Tonezzer, 2021a, 2021b; Tonezzer et al., 2021). The microbiological analysis was also carried out to verify the good correlation of the sensor response to the TVCs.…”

A Review on Metal Oxide Semiconductor-Based Chemo-Resistive Ethylene Sensors for Agricultural Applications

“…Compared to chemo-capacitive sensors, chemo-resistive sensors offer the advantages of simpler structure and lower cost [31]. Moreover, chemoresistive-based sensors can respond swiftly to changes in ethylene concentration and exhibit extended longevity, which can deliver a stable and reliable detection [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. Thus, MOSbased chemo-resistive sensors have great potential for simple, rapid, and in-field detection of ethylene.…”

Nanosensor Based on Thermal Gradient and Machine Learning for the Detection of Methanol Adulteration in Alcoholic Beverages and Methanol Poisoning

“…This approach has already been demonstrated on agrifood products by evaluating the freshness of meat and fish [ 27 , 28 ]. In practice, we join the responses at different temperatures (as if they came from different sensors) and combine them in multidimensional points.…”