Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation Monitoring (QCM-D) Service

Introduction

The quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) is a simple, highly sensitive, and highly versatile method that is often used to study processes occurring on surfaces or in thin films. QCM-D converts extremely small chemical, mechanical and electrical changes on the sensor surface into usable electrical signals to study dynamic processes. These studies are crucial in biomedical applications, because the interaction between medical devices with the physiological environment is mediated by surface features. In the past 15 years, the QCM-D system has been increasingly applied to the study of surface interactions, such as monitoring the binding efficiency of biosensors to detect surfaces and verifying biofunctionalization of nanoengineered surfaces through self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) or layer-by-layer (LbL) technologies. Because of its ability to measure the quality and viscoelastic properties of biomolecules, this technology can also be applied to the study of competitive protein adsorption on the surface of biomedical devices. In addition, it has the flexibility of substrate selection, basically, any material that can be evaporated or deposited within a sufficiently thin regime (~nm to μm range) can be coated on the QCM-D surface. Recently, people are more and more interested in using QCM-D to study cell behavior, because this technology can obtain cell responses in real-time and monitor cytoskeletal changes after in- or external stimuli.

Figure 1. Schematic representation of QCM-D plots reporting frequency factor (Δf) and dissipation energy factor (ΔD) vs. time (Tonda-Turo, C.; et al. 2018)

Services

Creative Proteomics is a professional biotechnology company and has established the QCM-D platform for more than ten years. Our QCM-D platform allows real-time research on phenomena that are of interest to customers without the need for labeling processes to prevent any loss of information. In addition, the temperature-controlled system of the QCM-D device allows it to simulate physiological conditions within the equipment chamber. The QCM-D we provide can be applied in many fields:

• DNA: analysis DNA sensors, DNA hybridization, gene delivery, and DNA-protein interactions, etc.
• Proteins: measure the amount of protein adsorbed on different surfaces, and small molecule-protein interactions, etc.
• Lipids: fingerprint detection of supported lipid bilayers (SLBs)
• Cells: measure the adsorption characteristics of specific types of cells on the surface, and the response of biomaterials to typical physiological conditions, etc.

Customers can choose different technology platforms according to project requirements, or contact us directly for consultation, and our expert team will provide you with customized experimental procedures.

Creative Proteomics is an international biotechnology company dedicated to research in molecular interactions and other related fields. The quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) platform we constructed has the characteristics of high quality and efficiency, and the data obtained can be directly used for paper publication. Our one-stop service aims to save customers time and money.