Identifying bacterial fragments on morphologically similar substrate using UAFM

The ultrasonic atomic force microscopy (UAFM) can be used effectively to map the elasticity of a surface. Using this technique we have demonstrated that biological fragments on a substrate can be easily identified which is otherwise difficult using only an AFM image. We have shown that AFM image can falsely interpret the surface morphological features on the substrate. We have taken the bacteria Pseudomonas sp. as a case study to demonstrate that UAFM technique is a powerful tool to study biological samples and differentiate morphological features on the substrate.     

Imaging anisotropic elastic properties of an orthotropic paper sheet using photorefractive dynamic holography

An important material property in the paper industry is the anisotropic stiffness distribution due to the fibrous microstructure of paper and to processing procedures. Ultrasonic methods offer a means of determining the stiffness of sheets of paper from the anisotropic propagation characteristics of elastic Lamb waves along the machine direction and the cross direction. That is, along and perpendicular to the direction of paper production. Currently, piezoelectric ultrasonic methods are employed in the industry to measure the elastic polar diagram of paper through multiple contacting measurements made in all directions. This paper describes a new approach utilizing the INEEL Laser Ultrasonic Camera to provide a complete image of the elastic waves traveling in all directions in the plane of the paper sheet. This approach is based on optical dynamic holographic methods that record the out of plane ultrasonic motion over the entire paper surface simultaneously without scanning. The full-field imaging technique offers great potential for increasing the speed of the measurement and it ultimately provides a substantial amount of information concerning local property variations and flaws in the paper. This report shows the success of the method and the manner in which it yields the elastic polar diagram for the paper from the dispersive flexural or antisymmetric Lamb wave.     

Quantitative determination of contact stiffness using atomic force acoustic microscopy

Atomic force acoustic microscopy is a near-field technique which combines the ability of ultrasonics to image elastic properties with the high lateral resolution of scanning probe microscopes. We present a technique to measure the contact stiffness and the Young's modulus of sample surfaces quantitatively, with a resolution of approximately 20 nm, exploiting the contact resonance frequencies of standard cantilevers used in atomic force microscopy. The Young's modulus of nanocrystalline ferrite films has been measured as a function of oxidation temperature. Furthermore, images showing the domain structure of piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate ceramics have been taken.     

Evaluation of the contact resonance frequencies in atomic force microscopy as a method for surface characterisation (invited)

The combination of ultrasound with atomic force microscopy (AFM) opens the high lateral resolution of scanning probe techniques in the nanometer range to ultrasonics. One possible method is to observe the resonance frequencies of the AFM sensors under different tip-sample interaction conditions. AFM sensors can be regarded as small flexible beams. Their lowest flexural and torsional resonance frequencies are usually found to be in a range between several kHz and several MHz depending on their exact geometrical shape. When the sensor tip is in a repulsive elastic contact with a sample surface, the local indentation modulus can be determined by the contact resonance technique. Contact resonances in the ultrasonic frequency range can also be used to improve the image contrast in other dynamic techniques as, for example, in the so-called piezo-mode. Here, an alternating electric field is applied between a conducting cantilever and a piezoelectric sample. Via the inverse piezoelectric effect, the sample surface is set into vibration. This excitation is localised around the contact area formed by the sensor tip and the sample surface. We show applications of the contact resonance technique to piezoelectric ceramics.     

Random networks of fibres display maximal heterogeneity in the distribution of elastic energy

Above a small length scale, the distribution of local elastic energies in a material under an external load is typically Gaussian, and the dependence of the average elastic energy on strain defines the stiffness of the material. Some particular materials, such as granular packings, suspensions at the jamming transition, crumpled sheets and dense cellular aggregates, display under compression an exponential distribution of elastic energies, but also in this case the elastic properties are well defined. We demonstrate here that networks of fibres, which form uncorrelated non-fractal structures, have under external load a scale invariant distribution of elastic energy (epsilon) at the fibre-fibre contacts proportional to 1/epsilon. This distribution is much broader than any other distribution observed before for elastic energies in a material. We show that for small compressions it holds over 10 orders of magnitude in epsilon. In such a material a few 'hot spots' carry most of the elastic load. Consequently, these materials are highly susceptible to local irreversible deformations, and are thereby extremely efficient for damping vibrations.     

Remote photoacoustic imaging on solid material using a two-wave mixing interferometer

We report on remote and contactless photoacoustic imaging (PAI) for the inspection of solid materials using a two-wave mixing interferometer. In this Letter, a semitransparent sample was excited with picosecond laser pulses. The local absorption of the electromagnetic radiation led to generation of broadband ultrasonic waves inside the sample. Ultrasonic waves arriving at the sample surface were detected utilizing a two-wave mixing interferometer. After data acquisition, the initial pressure distribution was reconstructed using a Fourier space synthetic aperture technique algorithm. We show the potential of PAI for the inspection of semitransparent solid materials.     

Influence of surface energy and relative humidity on AFM nanomechanical contact stiffness

The effects of surface functionality and relative humidity (RH) on nanomechanical contact stiffness were investigated using atomic force acoustic microscopy (AFAM), a contact scanned-probe microscopy (SPM) technique. Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) with controlled surface energy were studied systematically in a controlled-humidity chamber. AFAM amplitude images of a micropatterned, graded-surface-energy SAM sample revealed that image contrast depended on both ambient humidity and surface energy. Quantitative AFAM point measurements indicated that the contact stiffness remained roughly constant for the hydrophobic SAM but increased monotonically for the hydrophilic SAM. To correct for this unphysical behavior, a viscoelastic damping term representing capillary forces between the tip and the SAM was added to the data analysis model. The contact stiffness calculated with this revised model remained constant with RH, while the damping term increased strongly with RH for the hydrophilic SAM. The observed behavior is consistent with previous studies of surface energy and RH behavior using AFM pull-off forces. Our results show that surface and environmental conditions can influence accurate measurements of nanomechanical properties with SPM methods such as AFAM.     

Quantitative measurement of local elasticity of SiOx film by atomic force acoustic microscopy

<正>In this paper the elastic properties of SiO_x film are investigated quantitatively for local fixed point and qualitatively for overall area by atomic force acoustic microscopy(AFAM) in which the sample is vibrated at the ultrasonic frequency while the sample surface is touched and scanned with the tip contacting the sample respectively for fixed point and continuous measurements.The SiO_x films on the silicon wafers are prepared by the plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition(PECVD).The local contact stiffness of the tip-SiO_x film is calculated from the contact resonance spectrum measured with the atomic force acoustic microscopy.Using the reference approach,indentation modulus of SiO_x film for fixed point is obtained.The images of cantilever amplitude are also visualized and analysed when the SiO_x surface is excited at a fixed frequency.The results show that the acoustic amplitude images can reflect the elastic properties of the sample.     

Local surface skimming longitudinal wave velocity and residual stress mapping

Local variation in surface skimming longitudinal wave (SSLW) velocity has been measured using a scanning acoustic microscope. A very narrow width electrical impulse has been used to excite the transducer of the acoustic lens. This permits the separation of the SSLW signal from the direct reflected signal in the time domain. A simple method of measuring the time delay between the directly reflected signal and the SSLW signal at two defocuses has been utilized for the local measurement of SSLW velocity. The variation in the SSLW velocity measured over an area of the sample is scaled and presented as an image. The method has been implemented to image the variation of the SSLW velocity around a crack tip in a sample of Ti-6Al-4V. Since the SSLW velocity is known to change linearly with the stress, the SSLW velocity image is considered as a representation of the image of stress around the crack tip. Local stress variation in the same region of the crack tip is directly measured using x-ray diffraction. The SSLW velocity image is compared with the x-ray diffraction stress image. The contrast in the two images, spatial resolution, and the penetration depth into the sample of acoustic waves and x rays are discussed.     

Imaging of electrically detected magnetic resonance of a silicon wafer.

An imaging technique of electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR) was newly developed. Because the EDMR signal is obtained from paramagnetic recombination centers, one may expect the image to represent the distribution of defect and/or impurity sites in the sample. We successfully obtained EDMR images of a light-illuminated silicon plate 8 mm in width and 15 mm in length, which was cut from a silicon wafer (n-type, 100 Omega cm), under ESR irradiation at a frequency of 890 MHz (wavelength, 340 mm). The reproducibility of the EDMR image obtained from a sample was amply satisfactory. When the oxidized surface of the silicon was removed, the EDMR signal disappeared. Although the EDMR signal reappeared when the surface of the sample became reoxidized, the EDMR image obtained was slightly different from the earlier one. This finding shows that the EDMR image obtained from the sample shows the distribution of defects at the Si/SiO(2) interface.     

Evaluation of elastic modulus of cantilever beam by TA-ESPI

The paper proposes an evaluation technique for the elastic modulus of a cantilever beam by vibration analysis based on time average electronic speckle pattern interferometry (TA-ESPI) and Euler-Bernoulli equation. General approaches for the measurement of elastic modulus of a thin film are the Nano indentation test, Buldge test, Micro-tensile test, and so on. They each have strength and weakness in the preparation of the test specimen and the analysis of experimental results. ESPI is a type of laser speckle interferometry technique offering non-contact, high-resolution and whole-field measurement. The technique is a common measurement method for vibration mode visualization and surface displacement. Whole-field vibration mode shape (surface displacement distribution) at resonance frequency can be visualized by ESPI. And the maximum surface displacement distribution from ESPI can be used to find the resonance frequency for each vibration mode shape. And the elastic modules of a test material can be easily estimated from the measured resonance frequency and Euler-Bernoulli equation. The TA-ESPI vibration analysis technique can be used to find the elastic modulus of a material requiring simple preparation process and analysis.     

Shear and compressional wave speeds in Hertzian granular media

It is shown that the shear wave speed in a granular medium is less than that in an elastic solid of the same shear modulus-to-density ratio. Shear and compressional wave speeds are derived for granular media using a conservation of energy approach. The grains are assumed to be spherical with elastic Hertzian contacts of constant stiffness. The affine approximation is used to determine the relative displacements of grain centers, and it is also assumed that the grains are small compared to a wavelength, consistent with the effective medium approximation. Potential and kinetic energies associated with linear motion are the same as those in an elastic solid, but it is found that shear wave propagation in a granular medium involves additional energies associated with grain rotation. The partition of energies results in a reduction in the shear wave speed, relative to an elastic solid of the same shear modulus-to-density ratio. It is shown that the reduction is an inherent property of granular media, independent of any departure from the affine approximation or fluctuations in coordination number or contact stiffness. The predicted wave speed ratios are consistent with published measurements.     

Effects of the orientational distribution of cracks in solids

We derive a theory for the elastic characterization of multicracked solids based on a homogenization technique. We consider a material containing a two-dimensional arbitrary distribution of parallel slit cracks which is elastically equivalent to a crystal with orthorhombic symmetry. We obtain explicit expressions for the macroscopic elastic stiffness tensor which is found to depend upon both the density of cracks and their angular distribution, here described by a suitable order parameter. For the isotropic case, we find that the degradation depends exponentially on the crack density. In addition, we show an unusual elastic behavior of a multicracked medium in the plane strain condition: for a negative Poisson ratio, we obtain an effective Young modulus greater than the actual value of the host matrix.     

Mapping of local argon impingement on a virtual surface: an insight for gas injection during FEBID

During the last decades, focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID) has become a successful approach for direct-write fabrication of nanodevices. Such a deposition technique relies on the precursor supply to the sample surface which is typically accomplished by a gas injection system using a tube-shaped injector nozzle. This precursor injection strategy implies a position-dependent concentration gradient on the surface, which affects the geometry and chemistry of the final nanodeposit. Although simulations already proposed the local distribution of nozzle-borne gas molecules impinging on the surface, this isolated step in the FEBID process has never been experimentally measured yet. This work experimentally investigates the local distribution of impinging gas molecules on the sample plane, isolating the direct impingement component from surface diffusion or precursor depletion by deposition. The experimental setup used in this work maps and quantifies the local impinging rate of argon gas over the sample plane. This setup simulates the identical conditions for a precursor molecule during FEBID. Argon gas was locally collected with a sniffer tube, which is directly connected to a residual gas analyzer for quantification. The measured distribution of impinging gas molecules showed a strong position dependence. Indeed, a 300-µm shift of the deposition area to a position further away from the impingement center spot resulted in a 50 % decrease in the precursor impinging rate on the surface area. With the same parameters, the precursor distribution was also simulated by a Monte Carlo software by Friedli and Utke and showed a good correlation between the empirical and the simulated precursor distribution. The results hereby presented underline the importance of controlling the local precursor flux conditions in order to obtain reproducible and comparable deposition results in FEBID.     

Substrate-dependent cell elasticity measured by optical tweezers indentation

In the last decade, cell elasticity has been widely investigated as a potential label free indicator for cellular alteration in different diseases, cancer included. Cell elasticity can be locally measured by pulling membrane tethers, stretching or indenting the cell using optical tweezers. In this paper, we propose a simple approach to perform cell indentation at pN forces by axially moving the cell against a trapped microbead. The elastic modulus is calculated using the Hertz-model. Besides the axial component, the setup also allows us to examine the lateral cell–bead interaction. This technique has been applied to measure the local elasticity of HBL-100 cells, an immortalized human cell line, originally derived from the milk of a woman with no evidence of breast cancer lesions. In addition, we have studied the influence of substrate stiffness on cell elasticity by performing experiments on cells cultured on two substrates, bare and collagen-coated, having different stiffness. The mean value of the cell elastic modulus measured during indentation was 26±9 Pa for the bare substrate, while for the collagen-coated substrate it diminished to 19±7 Pa. The same trend was obtained for the elastic modulus measured during the retraction of the cell: 23±10 Pa and 13±7 Pa, respectively. These results show the cells adapt their stiffness to that of the substrate and demonstrate the potential of this setup for low-force probing of modifications to cell mechanics induced by the surrounding environment (e.g. extracellular matrix or other cells).     

Effect of sample tilt on nanoindentation behaviour of materials

Analysis of nanoindentation is based on the elastic solution of a rigid indenter perpendicularly penetrating a flat contact surface. In reality, nanoindentation is often performed on a tilt sample surface due to sample tilt mounting or the existing roughness of a polished or raw surface. In this study, finite element simulations as well as nanoindentation experiments on a fused-quartz sample with different tilt angles were carried out to investigate the influence of sample tilt on nanoindentation behaviour of materials. It was found that sample tilt results in increases in the indentation load, contact area and contact stiffness at the same penetration depth. The contact area increase caused by sample tilt cannot be accounted for by Sneddon's equation, commonly used in nanoindentation analysis. This results in a significant underestimation of indentation projected contact area, which in turn leads to an overestimation of the mechanical properties measured by nanoindentation.     

Real-time digital holographic microscopy of multiple and arbitrarily oriented planes

Digital holographic microscopy is used to numerically refocus a recorded hologram at an arbitrary axial distance. However, as a straightforward property of coherent light fields, image reconstruction on an arbitrary tilted plane could be directly obtained by a rotation in k-space. We demonstrate that this property allows the real-time microscopic inspection of particle distribution over three mutually orthogonal planes at the same time. As a straightforward application we use the proposed technique for real-time monitoring of fluid flow over the three cross sections of a microfluidic channel.     

In situ observations of compressive behaviour of aluminium foams by local tomography using high-resolution X-rays

We have investigated the compressive behaviour of closed-cell aluminium foams using a high-resolution X-ray CT. The microstructures of cell walls or Plateau borders in the foams were visualized in 3D using the local tomography technique which is a high-resolution CT method to reconstruct a region of interest within a large sample. The shapes and the 3D distribution of micropores, particles, and regions of solute segregation in the foams are evaluated, comparing the cell walls with the Plateau borders. Under compressive loads, the damage behaviour of such microstructures has been observed using an in situ test rig. It is found that the microcracks were mainly initiated from the cell walls and the micropores with large diameters were also damaged. The crack initiation sites are classified from the results. In addition, a method for non-destructive characterization of elastic and plastic deformation in the foams, which is called a 3D microstructure gauge (MG) method, is presented. Thousands of micropores as markers on each load were automatically matched by the information of those volumes and surface areas. The local strain mapping by the MG indicates that the edges of the micropores with large diameters have large strain under compression and this is consistent with the crack analyses.     

Importance of tread inertia and damping on the tyre/road contact stiffness

Predicting tyre/road interaction processes like roughness excitation, stick-slip, stick-snap, wear and traction requires detailed information about the road surface, the tyre dynamics and the local deformation of the tread at the interface. Aspects of inertia and damping when the tread is locally deformed are often neglected in many existing tyre/road interaction models. The objective of this paper is to study how the dynamic features of the tread affect contact forces and contact stiffness during local deformation. This is done by simulating the detailed contact between an elastic layer and a rough road surface using a previously developed numerical time domain contact model. Road roughness on length scales smaller than the discretisation scale is included by the addition of nonlinear contact springs between each pair of contact elements. The dynamic case, with an elastic layer impulse response extending in time, is compared with the case where the corresponding quasi-static response is used. Results highlight the difficulty of estimating a constant contact stiffness as it increases during the indentation process between the elastic layer and the rough road surface. The stiffness–indentation relation additionally depends on how rapidly the contact develops; a faster process gives a stiffer contact. Material properties like loss factor and density also alter the contact development. This work implies that dynamic properties of the local tread deformation may be of importance when simulating contact details during normal tyre/road interaction conditions. There are however indications that the significant effect of damping could approximately be included as an increased stiffness in a quasi-static tread model.     

Granular packings and fault zones

The failure of a two-dimensional packing of elastic grains is analyzed using a numerical model. The packing fails through formation of shear bands or faults. During failure there is a separation of the system into two grain-packing states. In a shear band, local "rotating bearings" are spontaneously formed. The bearing state is favored in a shear band because it has a low stiffness against shearing. The "seismic activity" distribution in the packing has the same characteristics as that of the earthquake distribution in tectonic faults. The directions of the principal stresses in a bearing are reminiscent of those found at the San Andreas Fault.