Meat quality assessment using Au patch electrode Ag-SnO2/SiO2/Si MIS capacitive gas sensor at room temperature.

An Au patch electrode Ag-SnO2/SiO2/Si MIS capacitive sensor equipped with a microcontroller was designed and developed to sense low concentration (ppb to ppm regime) of volatiles (NH3, TMA, ethanol, and H2S) generated from chicken meat spoilage at room temperature. The quality threshold or the acceptance limit for consumption of chicken meat samples stored at 4 °C, 15 °C and 25 °C using our proposed technique was found to be 105 h, 48 h, and 17 h respectively, highly correlated with TVB-N, TVC, pH and sensory evaluation analysis. When these well established standard methods (TVB-N, TVC and pH analysis) take many hours to complete the analysis involving many complicated steps, our fabricated sensor takes 55 sec to deliver sensing response reflecting the meat spoilage status. The sensor calibrated with our compact technique promises portable and inexpensive onsite rapid and accurate quality assessment of meat spoilage at room temperature.