| 1st NOSE II Short Course - Bressanone |
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Page 2 of 3
AgendaMondayMorning session
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Topic |
Duration |
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Introduction and definitions |
2 hours |
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Basic Theories |
6 hours |
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Sensors |
5 hours |
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Data analysis |
5 hours |
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Sampling |
2 hours |
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Circuit design |
1 hour |
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Calibration |
1 hour |
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Applications |
2 hours |
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Market aspects |
1 hour |
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Total |
25 hours |
Table 1 Overview on lecture topics.
Without understanding the basics the function principle of a higher system cannot be understood. The main difficulty for the lecturers is to cope with the differing background of the participants (engineers, chemists, physicists...) with a varying level of knowledge. Therefore reaching a common level of understanding is mandatory before going into detail.
In the following the lectures are explained in more detail grouped by category:
- Basic definitions and concepts of electronic noses:
As the first presentation Prof. D’Amico was describing terms like resolution, sensitivity and noise in general and applied to the field of chemical sensors. The theoretical description was linked with examples from electronics. Among other things different categories of errors and sensitivity were mentioned. - Basics of Chemical Sensing:
This section was opened by Mr. Andreas Hierlemann, who gave in total two lectures on thermodynamics and kinetics covering basic definitions, interaction mechanisms, equilibrium conditions, and sorption processes of the analyte-polymer system. This lectures and the following by Mr. Krishna Persaud were explaining concepts important for polymer based sensitive layers. In a second talk Mr. Persaud continued and presented the principles of gas-solid interactions (adsorption mechanisms/isotherms like Langmuir or BET).
Another large group of sensors is based on metal oxides. The contributions of surface phenomena and bulk effects to the sensing mechanism were presented by Mr. Udo Weimar. Prof. Giorgio Sberveglieri gave some more details of semiconductor band theory of semiconductors and grain size effects of nanocrystalline material. - Sensor Principles:
After the basics the next step were the sensors itself. Mr. Ingemar Lundström reported about voltammetric electrodes for electronic tongues, focussing on the measurement principles and techniques and the necessary data evaluation.
Mr. Enrico Verona covered the most important mass sensors as QMB and SAW sensors. He explained the principle of operation and gave equivalent circuit .
Mr. Krishna Persaud mentioned other polymeric sensors based on conducting polymers, intrinsic and composites materials.
Mrs. Camilla Baratto introduced at the end porous silicon sensors with their two dimensions of the sensor signal: changes in the photoluminescence and capacitance. - Sensor Preparation Techniques:
Mr. Pietro Sicilliano covered some important preparation techniques for gas sensors, which are commonly applied: CVD, sputtering, spray pyrolysis, sol gel process. - After dealing with the individual sensors multi sensor systems, supporting techniques and concepts were presented:
Mr. Patrick Mielle gave a lecture on fluid handling, sampling, and enrichment methods.
Mrs. Marina Cole introduced electronic circuits for gas sensor systems and smart sensor interfaces.
Prof. Corrado Di Natale covered the calibration of electronic noses.
Prof. Julian Gardner described some applications of electronic noses detecting simple or complex odours with many examples as illustration. Mr. Jan Mitrovics in his lecture on “Applications and limitations of electronic noses” gave an overview on available systems, while talking about the possibilities and limitations of e-noses. Finally Julian Gardner ended the series with a talk on market aspects. - Data Analysis:
The introduction to the section of data analysis was given by Mr. Matteo Pardo with a introduction to statistical pattern recognition. He started with a classical text book example of statistics, continued with parameter estimation and classification theory and concluded with learning theory.
Mr. Riccardo Leardi presented practical aspects of experimental design techniques. “The correct choice of parameters and proper planning of experiments can save some time”, was his take home message for the audience.
More advanced topics were presented by Mr. Santiago Marco. His lecture on “Radial Basis Functions and Fuzzy Systems” explained the basic of this methods. Mr. Fabrizio Davide talked about a dynamical approach to real time event recognition. He gave some definitions and practical solutions with examples to the event recognition problem.
Poster sessions
Participants were invited beforehand to submit a short abstract describing their current work. The abstract should be then presented by the means of a poster during the short course. The poster session was introduced in Lecce during the 3rd NOSE I School and proved to be valuable for the participants. This call was intended to give new students an opportunity to talk about their work with others, to share their knowledge, to gather new ideas, and to actively contribute to the short course. As the result of this 20 posters were presented during the short course in two poster sessions. Topics ranged from sensitive layer design to sensors and applications of e-noses in food and material investigations. The topics covered in the posters are listed in categories in Table 2.
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Category |
Posters |
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sensitive layer design and characterisation |
3 |
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development of sensors and sensor arrays |
7 |
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food investigation |
7 |
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material investigation / off odours |
2 |
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environmental studies |
2 |
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data analysis |
1 |
Table 2 Topics of the poster presentations (more than one topic per poster possible).
During the two hours an intense discussion was rising among the participants. This event will most probably be repeated during the next short courses, because the poster session was rated positive by the participants in the questionnaire.
Round Table
A new session was introduced in this short course. For the first time a discussion round was established. The goal of this discussion round and the poster session as well was to integrate the participants and have a bi-directional learning process. During the one hour of the discussion round the participants had the opportunity to ask the present experts questions and to discuss them in a broader audience. Mainly questions about practical problems were asked. This seems to be of relevance for the students. Also this part was rated good by the participants.
The Lecturers
- C. Baratto, Univ. Brescia, I
- A. D’Amico, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", I
- C. Di Natale, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", I
- G. Faglia, Univ. Brescia, I
- J. Gardner, Warwick University, UK
- A. Hierlemann ETH Zurich, CH
- R. Leardi, Univ. Genova, I
- I. Lundström, Univ. Linköping, S
- S. Marco, Univ. Barcelona, E
- P. Mielle, INRA Lyon, F
- J. Mitrovics, AppliedSensor, D, S
- M. Pardo, Univ. Brescia, I
- K. Persaud, Univ. Manchester, UK
- G. Sberveglieri, Univ. Brescia, I
- P. Siciliano, CNR, Lecce, I,
- H. Ulmer, AppliedSensor, D, S
- E. Verona, CNR, Roma, I
- U. Weimar, Univ. Tübingen, D