Fibre Optic Readout of Microcantilever Arrays for Fast Microorganism Growth Detection

Figure 5

Differential nanomechanical response of A. niger functionalised cantilevers. The black and red curves correspond to Figure 6 (A and B, resp.). The agarose reference sensor remained stable with a standard deviation of ~15 Hz. Vital spore growth, which is manifested by a resonance frequency shift, is detected in less than 4 h. An increase in resonance frequency is also observed after ~28 h. This is due to reinforcement of cantilevers caused by the growth of mycelium along their lengths. Different numbers of viable spores on each cantilever result in different magnitudes of response; however, growth rates are the same.