Portable sensor warns of rotting meat
Chemists at MIT have developed a portable sensor that can detect gases emitted by rotting meat, an advance that may allow consumers to determine the edibility of meat.
The sensor, which consists of chemically modified carbon nanotubes, could be deployed in “smart packaging” that would offer much more accurate safety information than the expiration date on the package, said Timothy Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry at MIT.
It could also cut down on food waste, he added.
“People are constantly throwing things out that probably aren’t bad,” said Swager, who is the senior author of a paper describing the new sensor in Angewandte Chemie. The paper’s lead author is graduate student Sophie Liu. Other authors are former lab technician Alexander Petty and postdoc Graham Sazama.
MIT said in a statement that the sensor is similar to other carbon nanotube devices that Swager’s lab has developed in recent years, including one that detects the ripeness of fruit. All of these devices work on the same principle, namely that carbon nanotubes can be chemically modified so that their ability to carry an electric current changes in the presence of a particular gas.
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