A Carbon Nanotube-Based Sensor for Measuring Forces at the Cellular Scale

In this paper we perform a theoretical study of a potential design for a carbon-nanotube device able to transduce forces developed at the scale of basic cellular processes into current variations. The proposed device transduces the deflection of a carbon nanotube upon the application of an external perturbation into a variation of the currents at the ends of a second nanotube, perpendicular to the former. The first stage of this study consists of an assessment of the sensitivity of the devices with forces in the tens of pNs, developed typically at the cellular scale. In the second stage, we focus on the transduction of the deflection of the cantilever into an electrical signal.