Fabrication of a piezoelectric biosensor based on a PZN-PT/PMN-PT single crystal thin film

In this paper, novel piezoelectric microbalance biosensors using single crystal lead zinc niobate-lead titanate (PZN-PT) and lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-PT) are presented. The PZN-PT/ PMN-PT materials exhibit extremely high piezoelectric coefficients and other desirable properties for biosensors, supposed to be a superior substitution for the conventional quartz crystal with the improved performance. . These biosensors provide rapid and minute quantitative target detection by monitoring the change in resonance frequency of the crystal probe. With the geometrical variations, various prototypes are compared with conventional quartz crystal microbalances (QCM). The superiority of the materials over conventional quartz crystal is demonstrated experimentally in terms of sensitivity. In addition, we examine the feasibility of ultra miniaturization of the PZN-PT based biosensor by fabricating freestanding single crystal films of the PZN-PT and patterning micro-scale biosensors with ion milling and argon-ion laser-induced etching technique. A fabricated prototype sensor utilizing the material in a thin film form has a size of 300x100x7um3.