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Cocaine by-product detection with metal oxide semiconductor sensor arrays

Tarttelin Hernández, P; Hailes, SMV; Parkin, IP; (2020) Cocaine by-product detection with metal oxide semiconductor sensor arrays. RSC Advances , 10 (47) pp. 28464-28477. 10.1039/d0ra03687k. Green open access

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Abstract

A range of n-type and p-type metal oxide semiconductor gas sensors based on SnO2 and Cr2O3 materials have been modified with zeolites H-ZSM-5, Na-A and H–Y to create a gas sensor array able to successfully detect a cocaine by-product, methyl benzoate, which is commonly targeted by detection dogs. Exposure to vapours was carried out with eleven sensors. Upon data analysis, four of these that offered promising qualities for detection were subsequently selected to understand whether machine learning methods would enable successful and accurate classification of gases. The capability of discrimination of the four sensor array was assessed against nine different vapours of interest; methyl benzoate, ethane, ethanol, nitrogen dioxide, ammonia, acetone, propane, butane, and toluene. When using the polykernel function (C = 200) in the Weka software – and just five seconds into the gas injection – the model was 94.1% accurate in successfully classifying the data. Although further work is necessary to bring the sensors to a standard of detection that is competitive with that of dogs, these results are very encouraging because they show the potential of metal oxide semiconductor sensors to rapidly detect a cocaine by-product in an inexpensive way.

Type: Article
Title: Cocaine by-product detection with metal oxide semiconductor sensor arrays
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1039/d0ra03687k
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1039/d0ra03687k
Language: English
Additional information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10107718
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