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Bioinspired smell sensor to trace pheromone released by the European spruce bark beetle

Forests have as a of late become increasingly plagued with bark beetle infestations as a result of climate change. The damage caused by tree killing bark beetles has within recent years seen a substantial increase. Detecting and removing infested trees at an early stage is an essential part of mitigating the spread of and the damage caused by the beetle. Today, the most common way of early detection is visual detection by forestry personnel. However, this is time consuming with highly variable results. In this thesis a novel approach to tracing the European spruce bark beetle through pheromone detection is investigated. With this approach, the antennae of the beetle were paired with an epitaxial graphene chip in order to create a bioinspired smell sensor. Tests were conducted on the sensor in order to investigate how the resistance changed over the chip as a result of the sensor being exposed to the pheromone 2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol. As a result of the tests, a corelation between exposing the sensor to pheromone and an increase of the resistance over the graphene chip was noted. However, more tests need to be conducted in order to draw any definite conclusions about the efficacy of the sensor in its current form. Additionally there are opportunities to investigate further optimization alternatives regarding the design of the sensor.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-173063
Date January 2020
CreatorsCederquist, Isac
PublisherLinköpings universitet, Institutionen för fysik, kemi och biologi
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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