Development of polymer/functionalised single-walled carbon nanotube gas sensors and application of electronic nose for smart healthcare

Abstract

An alternative method to the currently existing methods of screening and diagnosing diabetes has become indispensable to keep up with the alarming rise in diabetes cases around the globe. An electronic nose equipped with gas sensors over the decades has gained attention in the medical field for identifying the changes in the cellular level for early disease diagnosis. In line to this, an electronic nose based on seven laboratory-developed polymer/ functionalized single-walled carbon nanotube gas sensors and eight commercial metal oxide gas sensors was developed in this work to function as a system that can analyze the change in urine odor. To evaluate the performance of gas sensors, tests from three groups of urine obtained from healthy volunteers, diabetic patients, and alcohol-drinking volunteer were conducted. Representatively, all the gas sensors have shown excellent sensitivity to the changes in the urine odor and have discriminated urine odors based on the volatile organic compounds presented in its head-space. In future this work hopes to open up new avenues where this e-nose technology can be utilized for studying the patterns of urine odor to detect diabetic cases on time and revolutionize the current trend of diagnosing diabetes.