The impact of substrate topography on the morphological and mechanical properties of confluent MDCK-II cells cultured on porous substrates was scrutinized by means of various imaging techniques as well as atomic force microscopy comprising force volume and microrheology measurements. Regardless of the pore size, ranging from 450 to 5500 nm in diameter, cells were able to span the pores. They did not crawl into the holes or grow around the pores. Generally, we found that cells cultured on non-porous surfaces are stiffer, i.e. cortical tension rises from 0.1 to 0.3 mN m 21, and less fluid than cells grown over pores. The mechanical data are corroborated by electron microscopy imaging showing more cytoskeletal filaments on flat samples in comparison to porous ones. By contrast, cellular compliance increases with pore size and cells display a more fluid-like behaviour on larger pores. Interestingly, cells on pores larger than 3500 nm produce thick actin bundles that bridge the pores and thereby strengthen the contact zone of the cells.

Atomic force acoustic microscopy (AFAM), an advanced scanning probe microscopy technique, has been used to measure local elastic properties with a spatial resolution given by the tip-sample contact radius. AFAM is based on inducing out-of-plane vibrations in the specimen. The vibrations are sensed by the AFM cantilever from by the photodiode signal when its tip is in contact with the material under test. To measure local damping, the inverse quality factor Q−1 of the resonance curve is usually evaluated. Here, from the contact-resonance spectra obtained, we determine the real and imaginary part of the contact stiffness k* and from these two quantities the local damping factor Qloc−1 is obtained which is proportional to the imaginary part γ of the contact stiffness. The evaluation of the data is based on the cantilever's mass distribution with damped flexural modes and not on an effective point-mass approximation for the cantilever’s motion. The given equation is simple to use and has been employed to study the local Qloc−1 of amorphous PdCuSi metallic glass and its crystalline counterpart as a function of position of the AFM tip on the surface. The width of the distribution changes dramatically from the amorphous to the crystalline state as expected from the consequences of the potential-energy landscape picture. The center value of the distribution curve for Qloc−1 coincides very well with published data, based on global ultrasonic or internal friction measurements. This is compared to Qloc−1 measured in crystalline SrTiO3, which exhibits a narrow distribution, as expected.

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Nanoscale elastic properties of twinned martensite NiMnGa films were characterized by means of atomic force acoustic microscopy using cantilever contact-resonance spectra to measure the local contact stiffness k * and the local damping Q −1 , which contains information on the crystallographic anisotropy of martensitic twin variants and the dissipative motion of twin boundaries (TBs). Images of k * and indentation modulus maps were obtained. Similar to topography images measured by conventional atomic force microscopy in contact mode, they show the nature of the twin structure and thus a regular variation in local elastic modulus. A correlation between k * and Q −1 was observed and mirrors the motion of the TB accompanied by a viscoelastic procedure. The k * -image and the topography image measured are opposite in contrast, which likely arises from mobile and immobile TBs depending on the geometry of twinning. Multi-resonance spectra were measured, which can be related to martensitic multivariants and are explainable as different types of nanotwins. A critical stress, defined as the starting point of softening due to TB movement was determined to be about 0.5 GPa for a thick film (1 µm) and 0.75 GPa for a thin film (0.15 µm), respectively. The values are much larger than that measured for bulk materials, but reasonable due to a large internal stress in the films.

We report on friction measurements on a La0.6Sr0.4MnO3 (LSMO) thin film using atomic force microscopy cantilever contact-resonances. There is a contribution to the damping of the cantilever oscillations, which is caused by micro-sliding of the cantilever tip on the surface of the thin film. This frictional part decreases with temperature parallel to the increase in the resistivity of the thin film. The LSMO is well-known for a ferromagnetic to paramagnetic phase transition that occurs without changes in the rhombohedral (R-3c) crystalline structure. The magnetic transition at the Curie temperature TC ∼ 360 K is accompanied by a metal-to-metal transition with a large increase in electrical resistivity. The behavior of the cantilever damping constant demonstrates that there is a direct coupling between mechanical friction and the mobility of the electrons in the LSMO film.