Independent component analysis of nanomechanical responses of cantilever arrays

The ability to detect and identify chemical and biological elements in air or liquid environments is of far reaching importance. Performing this task using technology that minimally impacts the perceived environment is the ultimate goal. The development of functionalized cantilever arrays with nanomechanical sensing is an important step towards this goal. This report couples the feature extraction abilities of independent component analysis (ICA) and the classification techniques of neural networks to analyze the signals produced by microcantilever-array-based nanomechanical sensors. The unique capabilities of this analysis unleash the potential of this sensing technology to accurately identify chemical mixtures and concentrations. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the knowledge of how the sensor array reacts to individual analytes in isolation is sufficient information to decode mixtures of analytes—a substantial benefit, significantly increasing the analytical utility of these sensing devices.