Resumen en español

A bibliographic review about the main aspects concerning the development of immunosensors is presented in this article, as well as some of the experimental results in an application in the analysis of carbaryl plaguicide that illustrates the analytical methodology and the expected results. The quartz crystal microbalance immunosensor (QCM), known as piezoelectric immunosensor, is an analytical system which combines an immunoreagent as the biologic component, a quartz crystal transducer with an immobilized antigen or antibody on its surface, coupled to an information processing system. Due to its simplicity, convenience, low cost, accuracy, stability, and real time response, this device has become very important, especially for material analysis in biomedicine, food, environment, and veterinary.