Piezoelectric Micromembranes for the Fabrication of a Diagnostic Chip Based on the Real-Time Monitoring of Antigen-Antibody Interactions

Labeling molecules for the quantitative measurement of biological interactions might influence the binding efficiency because of change of the ligand-analyte interaction kinetic parameters induced by conformation changes or steric hindrance due to the labeling marker. That is why no-labeling techniques for the measurement of biological interactions are of paramount importance. Within this trend, we developed matrices of piezoelectric micromembranes working in dynamic mode (resonant frequency variation vs sensor´s mass change) for the real-time quantification of biological interactions. Antigen- antibody interactions were monitored with an intrinsic mass sensitivity of 20 pg/(Hz.mm²) that is up to 10 times greater than for commercial QCM machines.