Optical chemosensor arrays for taste components

Foods and drinks contain various taste components at wide concentration ranges, which are significant markers to evaluate their freshness and/or flavors. In contrast to well-established instrumental approaches, chemosensors consisting of synthetic receptors and reporters (dyes and/or fluorophores) show optical changes upon analyte capture. The various optical characteristics of chemosensors on an array depend on the types of analytes and their concentration. The obtained fingerprint-like optical responses are followed by data processing to visualize the qualitative and quantitative chemical information based on pattern recognition. Toward practical applications, the author has proposed solid-state chemosensor array devices made of polymer gels or paper substrates. The optical responses of the devices are recorded by portable apparatuses, which contribute to food and drink analysis without using laboratory facilities. In this paper, the sensor design, the optimization of device fabrication, and sensor performance are introduced.