[MANA E-BULLETIN Vol.2 - Feature] MSS :Towards a De Facto Standard for Olfactory Sensing

Birth of Membrane-type Surface stress Sensor “My background is surface science and my first interest in sensors was triggered in 2007 during my stay as a visiting scientist at the University of Basel,” says Genki Yoshikawa, Group Leader at the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA), at the National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS). “I worked in Dr. Christoph Gerber’s group. I learned a lot from him and his colleagues about cantilever array sensors. Then, I also had collaboration with Dr. Heinrich Rohrer and with the MEMS expert members from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, eventually leading to the invention of the Membrane-type Surface stress Sensor (MSS). We published the technical side of the story in 2011 [1]. While there are lots of potential applications for MSS, I decided to focus on smell, because it is the last ‘untapped sensor’ with no commercially available devices in our daily life for more than 30 years at least.”