Nanomechanical sensing is one of the most sensitive transduction principles to measure a variety of parameters. Atomic force microscopy is one such example that opened the doors to the nanoworld. Over the years, this principle has been extended to beyond imaging: detecting mass of a single molecule, sensing femtomolar biological samples, detecting single-base-pair mismatch in DNA, rapid monitoring of bacterial growth, exploiting nonlinear nanomechanics etc.

The special issue will be based on the contributions made at the 13th International Workshop on Nanomechanical Sensing in Delft, the Netherlands, during 22–24 June 2016, which was an annual meeting for scientists working in this area to share recent developments. Authors are invited to extend their work to journal papers and increase awareness for their scientific work to beyond the attendees of the annual meeting by open-access publication.

The following topics are covered: instrumentation, biological sensors, chemical sensors, theoretical modeling of sensors, micro- and nano-fabrication, optomechanics and novel sensing platforms.