On predicting responses to mixtures in quartz microbalance sensors

A fundamental question in studying odor patterns in electronic noses is how to estimate the response to a mixture, given the response curves of the pure chemicals. We study this question by proposing two mixture-predicting models, and verify them against real data collected using quartz microbalance sensors. We find that a simple additive law explains fairly well the measured response patterns of binary mixtures, but that a slightly more complicated mixing model is required in order to produce good estimations of the response patterns of mixtures that are comprised of more than two compounds.