A single input–single output mass sensor based on a coupled array of microresonators

This paper summarizes the results of a joint analytical and experimental investigation of a new class of resonant microsensors. The key feature of these devices is that they exploit vibration localization in a set of functionalized, frequency mistuned microbeam resonators, each coupled to a common shuttle mass, to facilitate the detection of multiple analytes using a single sensor input and a single sensor output (measurement readout). The work details a wide variety of issues related to the development of such a sensor, with particular emphasis placed on the formulation of a representative lumped-mass model for the sensor, the analysis of the sensor model’s frequency response, preliminary experimental results, which verify the feasibility of the proposed sensor design, and pertinent design and integration issues.