Culturing and probing physical behavior of individual breast cancer cells on SiC microdisk resonators

This digest paper reports the first experimental exploration of directly culturing and measuring breast cancer cells at single-cell level, on the surfaces of silicon carbide (SiC) microdisk resonators. Enabled by the superior biocompatibility of SiC, individual breast cancer cells are observed to attach and spread on surfaces of SiC devices within only 3 hours of culturing. Multimode resonances at very high frequencies (up to ~100MHz) of SiC microdisks (with diameter d~20-30μm), and their responses to single attached MDA-MB-231 cells are characterized by taking advantage of the robust presence of multiple resonance modes in biological solutions. Such devices provide a useful biosensing platform for probing physical properties and behaviors of breast cancer cells in vitro, at single-cell level and in real time.