Nanomechanical Microcantilevers for In-Vitro Biomolecular Detection

Nanomechanical microcantilevers have enabled the sensitive label-free detection of chemical and/or biological molecules. In recent years, resonating microcantilevers have achieved the unprecedented sensitivity in detecting molecules. In this article, we review our current works on the label-free detection of biomolecules based on resonating microcantilevers. Our piezoelectric thick film microcantilevers exhibit the relatively high quality factor in a viscous liquid, indicating the potential of our cantilever to in situ biosensor applications for real-time detection of biomolecular interactions. It is shown that our microcantilevers allow the noise-free real-time monitoring of biomolecular recognitions, providing the insight into kinetics of biomolecular recognitions.