A novel, electrically protein-manipulated microcantilever biosensor for enhancement of capture antibody immobilization

This study demonstrated a microcantilever biosensor for enhancement of capture antibody immobilization. The electrically protein-manipulated, microcantilever biosensor is featured with enhanced capture antibody immobilization, miniaturization, and high sensitivity. Thanks to the electric property of biological substances in a real environment, given charged proteins can be manipulated with attraction in solution under an electric field. It is evident that higher amount of capture antibody molecules immobilized onto sensing surfaces captures or detects specific molecules, indicating greater deflection and stresses as well. This however leads to significant cost in biosensors. With the merit of MEMS technique that allows highly fabrication-compatible integration into microcantilever biosensors, sparsely distributed antibody molecules in solution are attracted in focus onto a sensing solid surface under electric fields. As the sensing element of the gold-coated, V-shaped silicon nitride microcantilever also serves as an electrode, the electric fields are applied in a channel of flowing microfluidics by locally in-plane electrodes or by a top electrode arranged for three-dimensional fields. As expected, most charged proteins distributed in solution are effectively attracted onto the sensing area within the electric fields. This improves the efficiency of capture antibody immobilization and achieves an eight-fold reduction over the necessary amount of capture antibodies without applying electric fields. With such a successful manipulation of charged proteins, the novel microcantilever biosensor exhibits efficient use of capture antibodies in solution.