Electronic nose based on carbon nanocomposite sensors for clove essential oil detection.

This work describes the development of an electronic nose (e-nose) based on carbon nanocomposites to detect clove essential oil (CEO), eugenol (EUG), and eugenyl acetate (EUG.ACET). Our e-nose system is comprised of an array of six sensing units modified with nanocomposites of poly(aniline) (PANI), graphene oxide (GO) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) doped with different acids, dodecyl benzene sulfonic acid (DBSA), camphorsulfonic acid (CSA) and hydrochloric acid (HCl). The electronic nose presented an excellent analytical performance to the detected analytes (CEO, EUG, EUG.ACET), with high sensitivity and reversibility. The limit of detection was lower than 1.045 ppb, with response time (<13.26 s) and recovery time (<106.29 s) and low hysteresis. Information visualization methods (PCA and IDMAP) demonstrated that the e-nose was efficient to discriminate the different concentrations of analytes volatile oil compounds. PM-IRRAS measurements suggest that the doping mechanism of molecular architectures is composed by a change in the oscillation energy of the characteristic dipoles and changes in the molecular orientation dipoles C=C and C=O at 1615 cm-1 and 1740 cm-1, respectively. The experimental results indicate that our e-nose system is promising for rapid analysis method to monitor the quality of essential oils.