Validation of antibody-based recognition by piezoelectric transducers through electroacoustic admittance analysis
Résumé
The development of immunosensors based on piezoelectric transducers is widely investigated due to their attractive potentialities. The quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) may give a direct response signal which characterizes the binding event between a sensitive layer, immobilized onto the surface transducer, and the analyte to be detected. However, for small biomolecules, such as some antigens, it is quite difficult to obtain an observable signal. This is mainly due to the lack of sensitivity of the commonly used QCM (5 to 10 MHz quartz crystal). Moreover, the mass estimated with the QCM response through the Sauerbrey equation and the mass which can be measured thanks to other analytical techniques, in our case an enzymatic assay, are different: the deposited mass is generally overestimated by the QCM.