Sensor Arrays and Electronic Tongue Systems

This paper describes recent work performed with electronic tongue systems utilizing electrochemical sensors. The electronic tongues concept is a new trend in sensors that uses arrays of sensors together with chemometric tools to unravel the complex information generated. Initial contributions and also the most used variant employ conventional ion selective electrodes, in which it is named potentiometric electronic tongue. The second important variant is the one that employs voltammetry for its operation. As chemometric processing tool, the use of artificial neural networks as the preferred data processing variant will be described. The use of the sensor arrays inserted in flow injection or sequential injection systems will exemplify attempts made to automate the operation of electronic tongues. Significant use of biosensors, mainly enzyme-based, to form what is already named bioelectronic tongue will be also presented. Application examples will be illustrated with selected study cases from the Sensors and Biosensors Group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.