Issue 24, 2011
From the journal:

Lab on a Chip

High-resolution cantilever biosensor resonating at air–liquid in a microchannel

Jungwook Park,*a   Shuhei Nishida,a   Pierre Lambert,b   Hideki Kawakatsua  and  Hiroyuki Fujitaa  

* Corresponding authors

a Center for International Research on Micronano Mechatronics (CIRMM), Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba Meguro, Tokyo, Japan
E-mail: jwook@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Fax: +81 3 5452 6250
Tel: +81 3 5452 6248

b Laboratory of Integrated Micro and Mechatronics Systems/CNRS-IIS, UMI 2820, 4-6-1 Komaba Meguro, Tokyo, Japan
E-mail: Pierre.lambert@ulb.ac.be

Abstract

We have developed a highly mass-sensitive cantilever resonating at the interface of air and liquid. The cantilever is applicable as a biosensor by measuring its resonance frequency shift associated with the selective trapping of target molecules. One surface of the cantilever facing to the liquid is functionalized for label-free detection, while the opposite side is exposed to air to improve the resonance characteristics, such as the quality factor. The quality factor at resonance is 15, which is 50% higher than the same cantilever in liquid. The beam was excited through the photothermal effect of a power modulated laser and detected by laser Doppler velocimetry. Due to the proposed configuration, the signal-to-noise-ratio is 5.7 times larger than the completely submerged case. A micro-slit around the cantilever separates the air and liquid phases at a meniscus. We analyzed the cantilever motion including the meniscus membrane, and examined the effect of surface tension by applying various solutions. A slit width of 6 μm was found to give the best performance within the few prototypes. We measured the covalent immobilization of antibody molecules on a cantilever surface for three different concentrations: 20, 40, and 80 μg ml−1. The kinetics measured by both resonance frequency shift of the cantilever and fluorescent intensity showed good agreement.

Graphical abstract: High-resolution cantilever biosensor resonating at air–liquid in a microchannel

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C1LC20608G
Article type
Paper
Submitted
07 Jul 2011
Accepted
30 Aug 2011
First published
28 Oct 2011

Lab Chip, 2011,11, 4187-4193

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High-resolution cantilever biosensor resonating at air–liquid in a microchannel

J. Park, S. Nishida, P. Lambert, H. Kawakatsu and H. Fujita, Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 4187 DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20608G

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