Microcantilever sensors

The advent of inexpensive, mass-produced microcantilevers promises to bring about a revolution in the field of chemical, physical, and biological sensor development. The microcantilever resonance responses such as resonance frequency, deflection, amplitude, and Q-factor undergo variation due to external stimuli. The resonance response variation can be due to mass loading, surface stress, or damping. When molecules adsorb on surfaces they can also produce a surface stress due to forces involved in the adsorption process and can be observed as changes in deflections of a thin microcantilever. In this article we review the technology and present a series of highly sensitive sensors that are based on commercially available microcantilevers used in atomic force microscopy.