Carbon-nanotube enhanced piezoelectric biosensors

Abstract

Recently, biosensors with high sensitivity, compact size, rapid response and easy operation are urgently required to effectively detect, monitor, and control the fast spreading epidemics, such as influenza A (H1N1), dengue fever, bird flu, and hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD). The micro-piezoelectric biosensor is believed to be one of the candidates to fulfil the above mentioned demands due to its compact size, high sensitivity an easy integration with analysis circuit. Among the numerous reports available in the literature, cantilever and quartz-crystal microbalance system (QCMS) type biosensors are found to be the most representative piezoelectric biosensors due to their many advantages such as high sensitivity, label free detection, robust structure and high reproducibility; however, some drawbacks, including fragile structure, low quality factor and lack of integration limit their applications in monitoring and rapidly detecting the fast spreading epidemics.