The objective of this work was to develop a low-cost prototype of a Quartz Crystal
Microbalance - MCQ, useful as a teaching tool, capable of performing micro gravimetric and
interaction analysis between bioactive molecules. The use of unmarked biomolecular analysis
equipment is not common in the teaching of biomedical sciences, biotechnology and other
areas, since such equipment is expensive and has industrial or commercial characteristics that
sometimes exceed those necessary for teaching. The focus of this work was the research of
low-cost electromechanical components, but which resulted in an equipment that had
reproducible results. ANOVA demonstrates that the equipment responded adequately to pre produced gravimetric patterns, producing a satisfactory regression model, [F (1, 16) =
382.487, p <0.001; R2 = 0.959]. In comparison with the cost of commercial equipment, the
model developed had a cost 28 times lower. For biomolecular analyzes or a prototype capable
of identifying the antigen-antibody interaction in real time, as well as at the time when the
antigen-antibody complex was undone. The equipment was designed to be built using
common electronic materials and with a simple computational language. The results of the
performance tests and the fundamental characteristics were successful, showing the
appropriate applicability of the MCQ as a teaching tool or even basic research.
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