Atomic force microscopy as a tool applied to nano/biosensors

This review article discusses and documents the basic concepts and principles of nano/biosensors. More specifically, we comment on the use of Chemical Force Microscopy (CFM) to study various aspects of architectural and chemical design details of specific molecules and polymers and its influence on the control of chemical interactions between the Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) tip and the sample. This technique is based on the fabrication of nanomechanical cantilever sensors (NCS) and microcantilever-based biosensors (MC-B), which can provide, depending on the application, rapid, sensitive, simple and low-cost in situ detection. Besides, it can provide high repeatability and reproducibility. Here, we review the applications of CFM through some application examples which should function as methodological questions to understand and transform this tool into a reliable source of data. This section is followed by a description of the theoretical principle and usage of the functionalized NCS and MC-B technique in several fields, such as agriculture, biotechnology and immunoassay. Finally, we hope this review will help the reader to appreciate how important the tools CFM, NCS and MC-B are for characterization and understanding of systems on the atomic scale.