Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in a chemiresistor setup have been widely explored in bio/chemical sensing. Detection of certain molecules with environmental and health related importance such as 9-anthracenecarboxylic acid, diclofenac sodium, and curcumin using electrochemical methods/unfunctionalized CNTs suffer from lack of response, high limit of detection (LOD) and poor selectivity. The key to overcome these issues is to decorate CNTs with host (receptor) molecules like beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD) that interact with guest (target) molecules by hosteguest complex formation. To improve guest recognition, and consequently, the sensor performance, effective immobilization of beta-CD on the CNT surface using a non-covalent bridging molecule such as 3, 4, 9, 10-perylene tetracarboxylic acid (PTCA) is required. Furthermore, the selectivity can be assessed using the conductance correlation patterns of different host-guest systems in conjunction with a pattern classification tool. Our results indicate that PTCA linked beta-CD-decorated CNT chemiresistors showed a good linear detection range (similar to 100 pM-100 nM), sensitivity (similar to 3 x 10(-3)-9 x 10(-2) nM(-1)) and LOD (similar to 62 pM-101 nM), compared to devices without PTCA, in the detection of the guest molecules. The distinction in correlation patterns of different host-guest systems was corroborated by pattern classification yielding a classification accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of similar to 91.83%, similar to 90.13%, and similar to 85.39%, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.