pH Measurements with a Microcantilever Array-Based Biosensor System

In this paper, we present a pH measurement method that uses a microcantilever-array-based biosensor system. It is composed of microcantilever array, liquid cell, micro syringe pump, laser diode array, position sensitive detector, data acquisition device, and data processing software. Four microcantilevers are functionalized with pH-sensitive MHA(mercaptohexadecanoic acid) as a probe, while three microcantilevers are functionalized with HDT(hexadecane thiol) as reference. We prepare PBS(phosphate buffered saline) solutions of different pH and inject them into the liquid cell with a predefined volumetric speed at regular time intervals. The functionalized mircocantilevers in the liquid cell deflect as a self-assembled monolayer on the microcantilever binds with probe molecules in the solution. The difference in deflection between the MHA-covered probe microcantilever and the HDT-covered reference microcantilever was used to compensate for thermal drift. The deflection difference clearly increases with increasing pH in the solution. It was shown that when the pH values of the PBS solutions are high, there were large variations in the deflection of microcantilevers, whereas there were small variations for low pH value. The experimental results show that the microcantilever array functionalized with MHA and HDT can detect pH value with good repeatability.