Invited Paper NS-TuA7
Quantitative Nanomechanics of Soft Materials with AFM: Old and New Methods

Tuesday, November 8, 2016, 4:20 pm, Room 101D

Quantitative study of mechanical properties of soft materials at the nanoscale, such as the Young’s modulus, storage and loss moduli, etc. becomes important in the study of nanocomposites materials, polymers, biological tissues, and cells. Nanoindentation techniques are not capable to attain nanoscale resolution for such materials; whereas atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques do allow quantitative measurements of soft materials at the nanoscale. Although being attractive and simple, direct extrapolation of macroscopic models to the nanoscale is frequently incorrect. In this talk I will describe the AFM methods suitable for measurements of both static and dynamic moduli of soft materials. I will discuss both well-known modes of operation, such as the force-volume and nonresonant modes (e.g, PeakForce QNM) as well as new modes we recently developed (FT-NanoDMA or imaging nanoindentation and Ringing modes). Comparison of all these modes (including the nanoindentation technique) will be given. Studies of elastic moduli of polymers and cells will be exampled.