Conducting polymer technology–printed organic semiconductors–will reduce the price of “electronic noses” from today’s $10,000 and higher down to under a dollar by 2020, according to University of California, Berkeley scientists.

Today’s e-noses are expensive because they use electronic circuitry for signal processing and pattern recognition, along with multiple chemical sensors that have to be separately wired together. They can’t easily be mass-produced. With conducting-polymer-based e-noses, chemical interactions between an organic polymer and vapor molecule can change the polymer’s electrical characteristics, resulting in an electrical response that is cheap and easy to detect.