-Keywords
-Introduction
-Cantilever detection Modes of operation
-Cantilever detection Modes of detection
-Glucose and pH Sensing in Exhaled Breath Condensate
-Conclusions
-REFERENCES
For sensing biomolecular interactions in the static mode, only one surface of the microcantilever must be previously biofunctionalized and this can be a complex task especially when arrays of microcantilevers are employed.
In contrast to the static case, the dynamic mode does not require the functionalization of only one cantilever surface, as the cantilever resonance frequency change depends on the total mass adsorbed on both sides. In this mode, the microcantilever is used as a microbalance and extremely high sensitivities can be obtained (in the attogram regime), overcoming other similar and well-known mass detectors, such as the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM).[5] In first approximation cantilevers behave like a harmonic oscillator, and the mass change on a rectangular cantilever will produce a reduction on the resonance frequency, which can be estimated from:
where f0 and f1 are the fundamental resonance frequency before and after the mass adding, respectively.
Recent studies have demonstrated that surface stress can induce a microcantilever stiffness change, due to strain-dependent surface stress (elasticity), which can cancel or make negligible the resonance frequency change due to the added mass.[6–8] The induced cantilever stiffness change can produce a resonance frequency shift as high as the added mass, but increasing the microcantilever resonance frequency, depending on the attached protein density and thickness and the cantilever length.[9] Actually, this is one of the questions to be solved in order to avoid errors in the characterization of biological agents, being necessary to identify and detach the frequency shifts coming from the added mass and the stiffness changes.[10]
When working in the dynamic mode, the resolution of the system, Df, is determined by the quality factor, Q, following the expression △f=f/Q. The quality factor quantifies the energy dissipation and is defined as the ratio between the mechanical energy accumulated and dissipated per vibration cycle. Under liquids environments, the quality factor shifts toward much lower values than in air, due to the damping effect of the viscous surroundings, which decrease abruptly the overall sensitivity. For that reason, this way of operation is more difficult to implement and, until recently, most of the cantilever biosensors were based on the static mode.
Cantilever detection Modes of detection
In the optical lever scheme, the cantilever free end movement is detected by measuring the reflected laser beam displacement into a position-sensitive photodetector (PSD).

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