Recognition of olive oils by means of an integrated sol–gel SnO2 Electronic Nose

In this paper, we report a specific application of a semiconductor thin films based sensor array for the discrimination of different olive oils. The active elements of the sensor array were undoped and Ni, Pd, Pt, Os-doped SnO thin films prepared by 2 sol–gel technique. Olive oil samples were randomly selected. They included commercial olive oils of different qualities (extravirgin, virgin and husk oils) and non-commercial local olive oils (deriving from different zone of the Salento region in Apulia) with different degrees of acidity. The sensor array coupled with a principal component analysis allows discrimination between different olive oils. In particular good separation between commercial and local products was obtained. 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.