High frequency QCM based sensor system for sensitive detection of dissolved analytes

Abstract The quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) has proven to be a highly sensitive mass detector which found its way into biomedical sciences [1, 2]. Most biosensing systems based on thickness shear mode resonators work with resonance frequencies between 5 and 20 MHz. Utilization of high fundamental frequency (HFF) quartz resonators can further improve the sensitivity of such systems. In order to exploit this enhanced sensitivity for acoustic biosensing, we have designed a flow cell for HFF quartz resonators and introduced a gentle functionalization method for the small and fragile sensor surface. The resulting biosensor afforded sensitive and reproducible detection of dissolved analytes and allowed for rapid in-situ regeneration of the sensor surface.