Pegylated lipids as coatings for QCM odor-sensors

Lipids play an outstanding role in biological chemoreception schemes. The odorant–lipid interactions can be used as a mean of detecting the odorant molecules. A sensible way to exploit the interaction is coating the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensors with natural or synthetic lipids or lipid-derived materials. Interesting candidates for such coatings are reported in the present paper—the synthetic lipids grafted with poly(ethylene glycol) (pegylated lipids, PEG lipopolymers). Two such materials grafted with PEG chains 2000 and 5000 were used for coating the QCMs. The obtained lipopolymer sensors were compared with pure lipid, pure polymer and lipid–polymer blend sensors. The results revealed very good discrimination power of the fabricated lipopolymer sensors for the range of odorants used in the study. The sensors have high sensor-to-sensor reproducibility and characteristics distinctly different from those for the remaining sensors used.