Fiche publication
Date publication
juillet 2026
Journal
Small methods
Auteurs
Membres identifiés du Cancéropôle Est :
Pr FINOT Eric
Tous les auteurs :
Phani A, Finot E, Kim S, Thundat T
Lien Pubmed
Résumé
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) in tapping mode is widely used to image soft materials with minimal damage, but its brief tip-sample contact limits sensitivity to local mechanical response. Here, we introduce a modified tapping regime in which the tip maintains weak continuous contact during scanning, enhancing the detection of local deformation, relaxation, and energy dissipation that cannot be resolved by conventional tapping. We demonstrate this approach by imaging soft insulin aggregates as a representative biological soft-matter system, revealing finer internal heterogeneity and localized nanodomain-scale dissipation-linked features referenced to a sub-kT noise-equivalent baseline. This method improves phase and reconstructed energy-dissipation contrast, enabling mapping of mechanical heterogeneity at the nanoscale while preserving the overall topographic scaffold. Incorporating this method into tapping-mode AFM will be useful for investigating soft and biological interfaces where morphology alone does not capture important local response variations.
Mots clés
energy dissipation imaging, local mechanical heterogeneity, nanoscale heterogeneity, soft biological materials, tapping mode AFM
Référence
Small Methods. 2026 07 6;:e70790
