Development of Linseed Oil Based Quartz Crystal Microbalance Sensor for Detection of Trimethylamine

The present study aims to develop a linseed oil coated quartz crystal microbalance sensor to detect trimethylamine (TMA), an important freshness indicating agent of fish. The strong odor of TMA is often termed as “Fish odor”. It is likely to be generated when bacteria starts growing on dead fish. Therefore to detect TMA, a simple approach of vegetable oil film as a receptor element in the quartz crystal transduction platform has been elucidated herein. The developed sensor exhibits a significant sensitivity towards TMA with a sensitivity of 0.1841 kHz/ppm (R2=0.92). Alongside, satisfactory repeatability, reproducibility, and selectivity of the prepared sensor have been studied successfully.