02206naa a2200181 a 450000100080000000500110000800800410001910000180006024500490007826000090012752016300013665300240176670000210179070000290181170000190184070000220185977301430188110289382005-04-06       2003    bl ---       0--  u    #d1 aBORATO, C. E.  aElectronic tonguebscience mimicking nature.  c2003  aThe development of new materiais has being pave lhe way for lhe progress of technologies that would be considered science fiction a few years ago. Therefore, their feasibility is turning it over as many applications are becoming real. In this sense conducting polymers are smart materiais that have being thoroughly used for lhe development of biomimetic sensors, such as artificial muscles and more recently an "electronic tanQue". We present here a device able to differentiate tastes, made up by nanostructured thin films of conducting polymers. The senso r apes lhe human gustatory system as it cannot discriminate each chemical substance present in beverages and foodstuffs, rather grouping ali lhe information received in distinctly different patterns of r'3sponse that encode lhe taste quality (global selectivity concept). 8ased on that, this "electronic tanQue" has proven to be quite efficient in lhe recognition of tastants three orders of magnitude bellow lhe human threshold, allowing as well lhe classification and discrimination of wines, with regard to vintage, vineyard and brands, without complex laboratory analysis. Preliminary experirr,ents carried out with artificial neural networks show that a high resolving power is rendered to this device, pointing to a prominent wine classification accuracy. In addition, it does not suffer from lack of sensitivity due to long term exposure to a certain substance, unlike lhe case of humans, presenting an enormous potential of application beyond lhe realms of quality contrai in industries, envisaging environmental monitoring and possible pharmaceutical usage.  aLíngua eletrônica1 aRIUL JÚNIOR, A.1 aCARVALHO, A. C. P. L. F.1 aFONSECA, F. J.1 aMATTOSO, L. H. C.  tIn: WORLD CONGRESS ON SYNTHETIC RECEPTORS, 1. out. 2003, Lisboa, Portugal. Programme and abstracts... Lisboa : Elsevier, 2003. Ref. P3.35.