The core of the technology is the oscillating unit - a thin quartz crystal disk, which has electrodes deposited on each side. Via an applied voltage, the crystal can be excited to resonance, and the resonance frequency is related to the mass of the disk. If the thickness changes, so will the resonance frequency, f. By monitoring changes of the resonance frequency, Δf, it is possible to detect small changes of the crystal mass. The measurement enables the detection of nanoscale mass changes such as adsorption or binding of molecules to the surface, which will be detected as mass increase, whereas mass decrease will indicate mass removal, for example via molecular desorption or etching of the surface. In addition, QCM-D measures the dissipation, ΔD. The dissipation gives information about the energy losses in the system and are particularly useful in the study of soft layers, where this information is used for quantification of the layer properties. Applications:

• Biosensor development
• Biomolecular interactions monitoring
• Nanoparticles characterization
• Nanoparticles-proteins interaction
• And many more….

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          provided at NFFA-Europe laboratories by:

CIC biomaGUNE

Spain

JRC - ISPRA

Italy