Conducting polymer-based array for the discrimination of odours from trim plastic materials used in automobiles Original Research Article

This paper reports the test of the use of an electronic nose based on chemoresistive polymeric sensors for the discrimination of eight sample materials used in the car manufacture, including parts fabricated in polyurethane (PU). Principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) have been used in order to classify and identify the odours coming from the parts under study. Good separation among odours of samples of comparable composition has been obtained using the first coefficients of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the whole curve as the input variable of PCA. These results show the feasibility of the conducting polymer array of sensors to discriminate odours for the air cabin quality control.