Ultrasensitive quartz crystal microbalance enabled by micropillar structure

Pengtao Wang, Junwei Su, Wen Dai, George Cernigliaro, Hongwei Sun

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

38 Scopus citations

Abstract

We report a method to significantly enhance the mass sensitivity of a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) device in which Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) micropillars were fabricated on QCM surface to form a two-degrees-of-freedom vibration system. PMMA micropillars were fabricated using nanoimprinting lithography technology. The QCM-micropillar coupled system exhibits a unique resonant frequency, near which the mass sensitivity of QCM can be enhanced by several orders of magnitude. Both numerical simulation and theoretical analysis were conducted to understand this improvement. Thereafter, ultrahigh sensitivity of the QCM-micropillar system was demonstrated by detecting a 1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorooctyl-trichlorosilane single monolayer film.

Original languageEnglish
Article number043504
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume104
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 27 2014
Externally publishedYes

Funding

FundersFunder number
National Science Foundation0731125

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