Study on Improvement of Odor Recording Capability Based on Real-time Mass Spectrometry with Variable Ionization Energy

Abstract

An odor recorder is a system to record the odors as well as reproduce them. In order to record a wide range of odors, a number of available odor components are required in the odor recorder. Moreover, the sufficient pattern separation among all odor components is also required to avoid a collinearity problem caused by the lack of the pattern separation among odor components. In this study, we proposed an odor recorder based on real-time mass spectrometry with variable ionization energy in order to improve odor recording capability. In this system, the higher-order sensing capability due to the different ionization energies can be achieved. It was found that the enriched data obtained from this system could be used to improve the pattern separation among odor components. Moreover, the recipe of the target odor was more accurately estimated based on combination of m/z's obtained from different ionization energies. Thus, this proposed system could be useful to improve the odor recording capability so that the recordable range of odor could be extended.