CELLS AND MEMBRANES - Nanoindentation with Biological Applications - page 318

CHAPTER 10

CELLS AND MEMBRANES

Kuo-Kang Liu 1 and Kai-Tak Wan 2

1

School of Engineering, University of Warwick
E-mail: [e-mail]

2
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University
E-mail: [e-mail]

Nanoindentation of biological cells and thin biomembranes has been
demonstrated to be an effective means for measuring and under-
standing the mechanical behavior of these bio-entities with relatively
small dimensions and unusual mechanical properties. Several new and
variant indentation techniques have been developed recently. New
solid mechanics models spanning multi-scale indentation deformation
are constructed to analyze the force-displacement data so that the
quantitative materials parameters can be found.

1. Introduction

Mechanical characterization of cells and membranes becomes
increasingly important for the advancement of bioscience and
bioengineering. For example, the changes in elasticity and viscoelasticity
of cells which normally associate with their structure and molecular
alterations are regarded as a prelude or even prime cause of pathogenesis.
In tissue engineering applications, the engineered membrane is highly
“process-dependent”, that is, its mechanical (viscoelastic) properties
vary with the physiochemical conditions and protocols used during the
culture period. Intriguingly, the quantitative modulus obtained for tissue-
engineered membrane equivalents are shown to be fairly time-dependent

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