CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK - Nanoindentation with Biological Applications - page 347

data analysis, and would likely be led by a standards organization,
research group or materials testing laboratory.
Without the intervention of one or more instrument manufacturers,
research on nanoindentation of biological materials will continue, but
perhaps at a slower pace than would be found were a novel and
optimized instrument available. Current nanoindentation studies on soft
and hydrated materials utilize existing hardware—such that researchers
are left to “rig up” modifications to accommodate the limitations of
current instruments—with off-line data analysis requiring the efforts of
individual researchers to write custom data analysis routines. As such,
nanoindentation characterization of biological materials is different from
one laboratory to another, and retains a “research” feel instead of
the more uniform testing and analysis for elastic-plastic materials since
the introduction of the Oliver-Pharr method and commercialization
of dedicated nanoindentation instruments. The biological materials
nanoindentation community is thus fragmented and the impact of the
work minimized due to a lack of standardization.
An intermediate possibility, if no manufacturer customized an
instrument for both testing and analysis of nanoindentation data on
biological materials, would be the development of a stand-alone data
analysis program. With such a model, the data (however obtained) from
any current nanoindenter, AFM, or a custom- or home-built indentation
system could be analyzed in a uniform framework. There are two
obvious options for the development of such a system, either
commercially-funded or supported by research organizations. There are
also two (or more) options for a stand-alone data analysis package: open-
source software or a commercial product. The factors associated with
determining which model would prevail are intrinsically coupled to the
funding mechanism used to develop the software package, and the
projected commercial revenue associated with the sale of such a product.
A third model could prove viable, with a simple version available open-
source and an advanced version only available by fee-paying license.
This author certainly hopes that the arguments presented here help
motivate the community to form such a consortium (with financial
support as well) if an instrument manufacturer-led project does not arise
in the near future.