A rapid discreteness correction scheme for reproducibility enhancement among a batch of MOS gas sensors

Metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) gas sensors have been widely reported in machine olfaction system (i.e. electronic nose/tongue) for rapid detection of gas mixture components due to their positive characteristics of cross-sensitivity, broad spectrum response and low-cost. However, the discreteness of MOS gas sensors caused by inherent sensor variability during the manufacturing process results in the failure of the batch-oriented applications of MOS gas sensors due to their weak reproducibility. Certainly, it will also cause negative influence to the development of electronic nose/tongue based on MOS gas sensors (e.g. accuracy and consistency during electronic nose/tongue detections). Therefore, the contribution of this paper is to solve the discreteness and improve the reproducibility of sensors by designing an effective and easily realized scheme for large-scale calibration. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively and rapidly realize the calibration of the sensors' discreteness in batch of electronic noses production and the proposed scheme have also been used in industry. Besides, this paper also proves that one sensor's discreteness is constant and keeps unchanged when the sensor is exposed to different kinds of gas components.