We report the uses of conjugated polymers in multisensory applications and in chemical and optoelectronic tongues. We look at the potential of single polymers to discriminate multiple analytes and into small libraries of conjugated polymers that represent sensors. These small libraries combine several barely selective, promiscuous sensor elements and react with the analytes in a fairly non-selective fashion by change of color, emission wavelength, or emission intensity. In such optoelectronic noses and tongues, response of a single element is not specific or particularly useful at all, but the response pattern after the combination of several sensor elements is often specific for an analyte and allows discrimination and identification without any problem. These types of tongues and noses are well suited for quality control of foodstuff, beverages, and biological species such as proteins or cells. The discriminative process is often not well understood but it is powerful, particularly if the obtained data are analyzed by sophisticated statistical methods, i.e., linear discriminant analysis and/or principal component analysis. This added layer of analysis extracts the hidden information/patterns out of the data and allows visualization of the results.

我们报告了共轭聚合物在多感官应用以及化学和光电舌头中的用途。我们着眼于单一聚合物区分多种分析物以及进入代表传感器的共轭聚合物小型文库的潜力。这些小型文库结合了几种勉强选择性的混杂传感器元素，并通过颜色，发射波长或发射强度的变化以相当非选择性的方式与分析物发生反应。在这样的光电鼻子和舌头中，单个元件的响应不是特定的或根本没有用的，但是将多个传感器元件组合后的响应模式通常对于分析物是特定的，并且可以毫无问题地进行区分和识别。这些类型的舌头和鼻子非常适合用于食品，饮料，和生物物种，例如蛋白质或细胞。判别过程通常不被很好地理解，但是它是有力的，特别是如果通过复杂的统计方法（即线性判别分析和/或主成分分析）对获得的数据进行分析。这种增加的分析层从数据中提取隐藏的信息/模式，并允许结果可视化。