Researchers at the Texas
Analog1 Center of
Excellence2 (TxACE) at UT Dallas are working to develop an
affordable3 electronic nose that can be used in breath analysis for a wide range of health
diagnosis4. While devices that can conduct breath analysis using compound
semiconductors5 exist, they are bulky and too
costly6 for commercial use, said Dr. Kenneth O, one of the principal
investigators7 of the effort and director of TxACE. The researchers
determined8 that using CMOS integrated circuits technology will make the electronic nose more affordable.
CMOS is the integrated circuits technology used to manufacture the bulk of electronics that have made smartphones, tablets and other devices possible.
The new research was presented Wednesday in a paper titled "200-280GHz CMOS Transmitter for
Rotational9 Spectroscopy and
Demonstration10 in Gas Spectroscopy and Breath Analysis" at the 2016 IEEE
Symposia11 on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Honolulu, Hawaii.
"Smell is one of the senses of humans and animals, and there have been many efforts to build an electronic nose," said Dr. Navneet Sharma, the lead author of paper, who recently defended his doctoral thesis at UT Dallas. "We have demonstrated that you can build an affordable electronic nose that can sense many different kinds of smells. When you're smelling something, you are detecting chemical
molecules12 in the air. Similarly, an electronic nose detects chemical compounds using rotational spectroscopy."
The rotational spectrometer generates and transmits electromagnetic waves over a wide range of frequencies, and
analyzes13 how the waves are
attenuated14 to determine what chemicals are present as well as their concentrations in a sample. The system can detect low levels of chemicals present in human breath.
Breaths contain gases from the stomach and that come out of blood when it comes into contact with air in the lungs. The breath test is a blood test without taking blood samples. Breath contains information about practically every part of a human body.
The electronic nose can detect gas molecules with more specificity and sensitivity than Breathalyzers, which can confuse acetone for ethanol in the breath. The distinction is important, for example, for patients with Type 1
diabetes15 who have high concentrations of acetone in their breath.