Microsensor arrays for breath analysis

Breath analysis, an innovative non-invasive diagnostic technique, bears the potential of drastically reducing the costs of medical diagnostics offering a simple alternative to standard blood analysis. Here, a flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) reactor was used for synthesis and direct deposition of nanostructured metal oxide (MOx) films onto microsensor substrates. These sensors were assembled in an array and tested simultaneously for different analytes requiring low power consumption to heat the sensor to the operating target temperature. The sensors had varying responses to the different analytes depending on sensing material (e.g. SnO2, WO3, ZnO), facilitating improvements on the selectivity of specific analytes (e.g. acetone, methanol, isoprene).