Cantilever sensors equipped with nano sensing effects for ultra-sensitive detection of bio/chemical molecules

The paper presents micromechanical cantilever sensors with self-sensing element integrated for trace-level bio/medical detection. To significantly improve sensing performance, nano-size related effects are found and utilized that mainly come from surfaces/interfaces. Such effects can be categorized into three kinds, which sequentially are the surface effects due to the cantilever dimension shrunk into nano-scale, the effects at the interface between the solid surface of the cantilever (or its modified surface) and the self-assembled sensing molecule-layer, as well as, the size effects from the nano-metric signal self-sensing elements integrated in the cantilevers. With the nano-effects equipped, trace-level bio/chemical detecting experiments of the cantilever sensors and their promising applications are also related.