Aroma Chip Using a Functional Polymer Gel

Conventionally, the controlled release of aroma molecules has been achieved by employing mechanical devices; however, it has not been possible to avoid the noise and gusts of air that devices emit prior to transmitting aroma information. Another problem is the adherence of odor components to the device structure, because the aroma source is located inside or at the bottom of the device. In this chapter, the authors focus on a chemical container of a functional polymer gel (temperature-responsive hydrogel) that features a reversible phase transition between sol and gel and the controlled release of aroma molecules using a Peltier module to control temperature. By this approach, they developed a soundless olfactory display based on an aroma chip and solved the problem of the adhesion of odor components by placing a card-based aroma source (aroma-chip array) on the top of the olfactory display.