Basic and applied research is being conducted to develop simple to use chemical and biological sensor chips utilizing bio-chemo-mechanics for real-time, in-situ, detection of technetium, mercury, uranium, copper, and lead for deactivation and decommissioning applications. The bio-chemo-opto-mechanical (Bio-COM) chip involves properly fashioned arrays of micromachined silicon cantilevers containing embedded deformable diffraction gratings functionalized with chemically selective coatings. Adsorption of specific molecules on the cantilever array leads to bending, which changes the diffraction of light from the array. The biochemo- opto-mechanical (BioCOM) chips will be designed to contain an array of pixels, with each pixel containing an array of microcantilever springs in which one surface is derivatized with either an antibody coating or a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) coating for detecting Hg(II), Hg(0), Cu(II), Pb(II), U(VI), or TcO4-. The BioCOM sensor platform also offers the advantage of simultaneous measurement of many analytes using a single chip. The readout mechanism can be a reflected laser beam, producing a diffraction pattern, or in an ideal case the diffraction of daylight resulting in a change of color. In the latter case the proposed sensors would not require any external power, external or on-board electronics, or fluorescent dyes and associated optics, which will keep its fabrication and operation costs low while making it simple to use for realtime environmental monitoring.
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