Inkjet-Printed Colorimetric Paper-Based Gas Sensor Arrays for the Discrimination of Volatile Primary Amines with Amine-Responsive Dye-Encapsulating Polymer Nanoparticles

Arrays of gas sensors are of high interest for “electronic nose” applications. Here, we describe the fabrication of a colorimetric single-use gas sensor array made of paper allowing the discrimination of volatile primary amines based on their polarity. For this purpose, polymeric nanoparticles with different polarities containing an amine-sensitive chromogenic dye are deposited onto paper substrates by means of inkjet printing. Data processing is conducted by red-green-blue (RGB) color extraction, followed by principal component analysis (PCA) or agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC) analysis. The application to the discrimination of two cheese samples is demonstrated.