Lateral field excited film bulk acoustic resonator for detection of protein-ligand interactions

Presented is a lateral field excited film bulk acoustic resonator for real-time sensing of protein-ligand interaction using the biotin-streptavidin system as a model. The film bulk acoustic resonator works at 2 GHz in shear mode. For biosensing, the biotin was immobilised on one face of the resonator as the probe. The resonant frequency of the biotin-immobilised device drops rapidly at first and gradually reaches equilibrium when exposed to the streptavidin solutin due to the biotin-streptavidin interaction. Consequently, the lateral field excited film bulk acoustic resonator can be used to study the kinetics of protein-ligand interaction without the use of labelling or molecular tags. The proposed device shows promising applications for disease diagnostics, prognosis, and drug discovery.