Introducing scent to television's virtual reality is the promise of a new technology developed by scientists at the University of California San Diego collaborating with Samsung.
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"For example, if people are eating pizza, the viewer smells pizza coming from a TV or cell phone," said Sungho Jin, professor in the departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and NanoEngineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
Jin and his team of graduate students used an X-Y matrix system in order to minimize the amount of circuitry that would be required to produce a compact device that could generate any odor at any time.
The scent comes from an aqueous solution such as ammonia, which forms an odorous gas when heated through a thin metal wire by an electrical current.
The heat builds pressure, causing a tiny hole in an elastomer to open, releasing the odor, which is measured by the detector.
"It is quite doable," said Jin.
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The study was recently published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
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