Dear Colleagues,

In the last years, microcantilevers have been increasingly used as mechanical transducers of molecular recognition and for the development of miniaturized and sensitive biochip platforms. The principle is that intermolecular forces that result from molecular recognition events on the sensitised surface of a cantilever produce its nano-scale motion. Main techniques for the nanomechanical response include the optical lever method, interferometry-based methods, and the piezoresistivity technique. The optical lever method is the most extended due to the extreme accuracy and easy implementation for measuring cantilevers immersed in liquids. The applications include detection of cancer protein markers, pesticides, DNA hybridisation and pathogens. The great interest in these recent kind of biosensors relies on the label-free detection, high sensitivity, small sensor area, and the potential for simultaneous detection of tens, or even hundreds, of targets by making use of arrays of cantilevers. In fact, cantilever arrays can be mass-fabricated at low cost by adopting well-known semiconductor technology. Also, with microelectronics technology now pushing deep into the submicron regime, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are drawing interest from the scientific community for a wide range of applications due to their unique properties. Nanocantilevers are among those of the possible NEMS realizations that offer access to a parameter space that is unprecedented; fundamental resonant frequencies in the microwaves, active masses in the femtograms, heat capacities below a yoctocalorie, to name a few. Nanocantilever resonators have been proposed for ultrafast sensors and actuators, signal processing components and for quantum computing. Recent experiments have open up a new application, mass detection based on nanoresonators. The minuscule active mass of this elements allow to envision the detection of single molecules.

Topics

• Detection of gases and chemicals
• Biological detection
• Theoretical understanding of the nanomechanical response
• Fabrication of cantilever arrays for nanomechanical sensors
• Nanocantilevers
• Integration of nanomechanical sensors (microfluidics, actuators, sensors, CMOS)
• MEMS/NEMS technology for sensors
• SPM technology for molecular recognition imaging
• Transduction methods of the nanomechanical signal

Dr. Montserrat Calleja
Guest Editor

• microcantilever-based biosensors
• surface stress measurements
• mass detection
• microcantilevers
• nanocantilevers
• nano-micromechanical resonators
• nanomechanical sensors
• nanomechanics
• NEMS
• MEMS
• nanoresonators