Cyrano Debuts Electronic Nose at Pittcon

If you're nosy about super-discriminating sensors for organic gases check out Cyrano Sciences Inc. at Pittcon (booth 6259). At the show, Cyrano unveiled its first "chemical nose" product, the Cyranose 320 gas sensor chip. Unlike conventional metal oxide gas sensors, which work well enough for pure inorganic gases such as oxygen and hydrogen, Cyrano's nose uses conductive polymer composite sensor arrays to sniff out single-species and mixed organic vapors.

When gases infiltrate the polymer array they're absorbed into the conductive particle-doped plastics, which swell, causing their electrical resistance to rise. Different gases soak into differentially-reacting sensing elements to varying degrees, giving rise to what Cyrano has thus far found to be a signature pattern for every gas tested.

Since each sensor element is uniquely configured, each element of the array produces a different change in resistance in response to a gas. When viewed together the sensing elements create a pattern that provides a "fingerprint" for the sample being measured. There's just one catch: Sensor arrays must be "trained," with the help of pattern recognition software, to identify gases uniquely.

Cyrano's sensing platform is smaller and more reliable than most gas identification systems in use today, most of which are affected by humidity and temperature. The Cyranose 320 runs on battery power and is handheld (vs. benchtop size for conventional detectors). Cyrano believes their product's simplicity-through-miniaturization will lead to chip-based products suitable for high-volume, low-cost sensors for laboratories, plants, and even consumer markets.

For now, however, Cyrano is pursuing three specialty/niche markets: chemical/environmental, food processing, and the medical industry. In September 1999, Cyrano announced a partnership with Welch Allyn, a leading designer, manufacturer, and marketer of medical and dental diagnostic instruments. The aim of the collaboration is to produce products for primary care physicians.

Cyrano's longer-term plan is to develop its silicon-based "nose chip," containing as many as 10,000 individual sensors, as its eventual high-volume, low-cost product. Cyrano expects eventually these products will cost as little as $20 and, ultimately, will be marketed directly to consumers or integrated into "smart" products. In January 1999, Cyrano formed a collaboration with Hewlett Packard for codevelopment of the nose chip.

Simplicity Has its Advantages
The underlying principle of Cyrano Sciences' electronic nose is simple: detection, response measurement, signal processing, identification.

Like the complex system of receptors and neurons that help the human nose and brain to identify smells, Cyrano's sensors—even the current 32-element variety—provide a limitless combination of response patterns. According to Cyrano, this is what leads to their electronic nose's ability to detect almost any chemical gas.

The nose's broadly tuned sensor array offers minimal (currently sub-second) cycle time, multiple odor detection, operation in almost any environment without special sample preparation or isolation conditions, and no cleaning or purging between tests.

Applications

• Food quality: freshness, spoilage, contamination, batch-to-batch consistency, packaging integrity. Cyrano is talking with food and flavor suppliers as well as orange juice and coffee producers about possible applications.
  
• Medical: quicker and more accurate diagnostic, especially for breath sensors and anesthesia monitoring. Cyrano is sponsoring medical research at two institutions to evaluate the effectiveness of this technology in bacterial detection. In a study with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Dental School the focus is on vapors from bacteria known to cause bad breath. In a study with Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, Cyrano's technology is being used to diagnose upper respiratory infections.
  
• Environmental: detecting automotive emissions, land mines, toxic chemical spills, air/water quality, workplace environmental control in chemical, pharmaceutical, and petrochemical plants and laboratories. Cyrano claims that leading chemical companies are evaluating the technology for detecting leaks in pipelines and storage containers.

For more information: Saskia Feast, Cyrano Sciences, 73 N Vinedo Ave., Pasadena, CA 91107. Tel: 626-744-1700. Fax: 626-744-1777.

By Angelo DePalma