Electroacoustic polymer microchip as an alternative to quartz crystal microbalance for biosensor development

Laser photoablation of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), a flexible dielectric organic polymer, was used to design an acoustic miniaturized DNA biosensor. The microchip device includes a 100-[micro]m-thick PET layer, with two microband electrodes patterned in photoablated microchannels on one side and a depressed photoablated disk decorated by gold sputtered layer on the other side. Upon application of an electric signal between the two electrodes, an electroacoustic resonance phenomenon at ~30 MHz was established through the microelectrodes/PET/ gold layer interface. The electroacoustic resonance response was fitted with a series RLC motional arm in parallel with a static Co arm of a Buttlerworth-Van Dyke equivalent circuit: admittance spectra recorded after successive cycles of DNA hybridization on the gold surface showed reproducible changes on R, L, and C parameters. The same hybridizations runs were performed concomitantly on a 27-MHz (9 MHz, third overtone) quartz crystal microbalance in order to validate the PET device developed for bioanalysis applications. The electroacoustic PET device, ~100 times smaller than a microbalance quartz crystal, is interesting for the large-scale integration of acoustic sensors in biochips.