Figure 6.

Illustration of a biosensing strategy with a microcantilever. The cantilever is functionalized with antibodies on the top surface (these are the biorecognition agents, which are chemically bound to the surface). Due to the specific binding of analytes (in this simple example, the red antigens are captured by the antibodies but the green ones are not), a resonance frequency shift or a static deflection will occur. On the bottom, the scale of the size and mass of bacteria, virus particles, proteins, and micro RNA strands is illustrated.