ABSTRACT

Since a few years, the car industry which is confronted with a lot of parts that contribute to the "new car odor" [ I ] has become a new field of application of electronic nose technology. Most of these parts included polymers based elements like polyurethane foams for the seats, polypropylene and PVC for the dash boards and the doors.. . Parallely a lot of glues are used to seal the parts together and organic coatings which preserve the body. Therefore, the automotive industry strongly need to control easily and rapidly those different parts in order to decrease the number of potential sources of unpleasant odors and to create a more pleasant and safe environment for the users. Different types of gas sensors have been already tested on this kind of materials (MOS, MOSFET and CP sensors) [2, 3 ,4] and the measured responses were based on electrical resistance shifts.