Fabrication of Taste Sensor Chip and Portable Taste Sensor System

This paper reports miniaturization on one-chip size of a receptor part of taste sensor, which can measure the taste using lipid/polymer membranes. The miniaturization was made by producing metal electrodes and making lipid/polymer membranes deposit on a glass substrate. The reference electrode also realized a miniaturization and stabilization of potential according to laminating structures of pHEMA and polymer layers. Therefore, an integration of the working and the reference electrodes was attained on the chip. By realization of this taste sensor chip, taste measurement can be easily performed now in all places, such as the distribution industry and the medicine manufacture industry, including the food industry. Moreover, we succeeded to fabricate the portable taste sensor system which unified the amplifier, a data-processing unit and an LCD display