Photothermal cantilever deflection spectroscopy

Microcantilever sensors offer high sensitivity in the detection of adsorbed molecules based either on resonance frequency shift or changes in cantilever deflection, as both of these signals can be detected with very high resolution. Despite the high sensitivity offered by this platform, cantilevers suffer from poor selectivity due to the lack of sufficiently selective interfacial layers which can be immobilized on cantilever surfaces. This problem can be overcome by using photothermal cantilever deflection spectroscopy (PCDS), which exploits the high thermomechanical sensitivity of bi-material microcantilevers. A bi-material cantilever responds to heat generated by the nonradiative decay process when the adsorbed molecules are resonantly excited with infrared (IR) light. The variation in the cantilever deflection as a function of illuminating IR wavelength corresponds to the conventional IR absorption spectrum of the adsorbed molecules. In addition, the mass of the adsorbed molecules can be determined by measuring the resonance frequency shift of the cantilever as an orthogonal signal for the quantitative analysis. This multi-modal PCDS offers unprecedented opportunities for obtaining very high selectivity in chemical and biological sensing without using selective interfacial layers or extrinsic labels.