An artificial nose for bacterial monitoring

A team of scientists have invented an artificial nose that is capable of continuous bacterial monitoring, which has never been previously achieved and could be useful in multiple medical, environmental and food applications.

The invented artificial nose based on unique carbon nanoparticles capable of sensing gas molecules and detecting bacteria through the volatile metabolites the emit into the air.

The patent-pending technology has many applications including identifying bacteria in healthcare facilities and buildings; speeding lab testing and breath-based diagnostic testing; identifying "good" vs. pathogenic bacteria in the microbiome; detecting food spoilage and identifying poisonous gases.

The artificial nose uses chemical reactions and electrodes to sense and distinguish vapor molecules and record the changes in capacitance onto interdigitated electrodes coated with carbon dots. The resulting platform constitutes a versatile and powerful vehicle for gas sensing in general, and bacterial monitoring in particular. Machine learning can be applied to train the sensor to identify different gas molecules, individually or in mixtures, with high accuracy.