Theoretical comparison of sensitivities of acoustic shear wave modes for (bio)chemical sensing in liquids

A theoretical comparison of the sensitivities of various acoustic shear wave modes applied in (bio)chemical sensing in a liquid environment is presented. The sensitivity which is defined as the relative change of oscillation frequency due to mass adsorption in a (bio)chemical interface is obtained from perturbation theory. It is shown that the application of a Love wave mode for chemical compound sensing in liquids is very promising because of its high sensitivity.