仿生嗅觉与味觉传感技术及其应用的研究进展

Recent Advances in Bioinspired Olfaction /Gustation Sensors and their Applications

动物的化学感受系统具有惊人的能力,能够在极低的浓度下识别数千种分子结构各异的化学物质,其灵敏性、选择性和响应速度都远高于当前的人工识别系统。近年来,研究者致力于利用完善的天然分子识别机制,开发出一种与传统嗅觉/味觉传感器相比更具仿生意义的新型化学探测系统,即仿生嗅觉/味觉传感器。仿生嗅觉/味觉传感器通常将动物嗅觉味觉的受体、细胞和组织作为敏感材料,然后使用多种人工检测方法,如光学、电化学和声波检测器件等,实现对化学物质的检测和识别。文中概述了动物嗅觉/味觉感受系统对化学物质的信息处理机制,并结合本实验室的工作,综述了目前仿生嗅觉/味觉传感器的常用技术及其未来发展趋势,并展望了其在医疗、工业和军事等领域的应用前景。

The biological chemical sensory system has the ability to discriminate and identify thousands of chemical compounds at very low concentrations with extremely higher sensitivity and specificity than current artificial sensing devices. Recently, many researchers are trying to develop novel chemical detecting systems called as bioinspired olfaction/gustation sensors which take advantages of optimized natural molecular recognition. Bioinspired olfaction/gustation sensors consist of a primary transducer and a secondary transducer. The primary transducer is the biological recognition element of molecules such as biological tissues, cells and proteins. The second ary transducers such as optical devices, electrochemistry devices and acoustic-wave devices are the biochips for the detection of binding of chemical compounds to the primary transducers. In this article, we introduced the mechanism of biological sense of smell and taste, and outlined the latest advances of bioinspired olfaction/gustation sensors. Current research trends and future challenges in this field will be discussed.