Stress relaxation and creep experiments with the atomic force microscope: a unified method to calculate elastic moduli and viscosities of biomaterials (and cells)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified AFM-based method to measure stress relaxation and creep in living cells, enabling accurate determination of their elastic and viscous properties for biomedical research.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel approach using atomic force microscopy to simultaneously assess stress relaxation and creep, providing comprehensive mechanical characterization of biomaterials and cells.

Findings

AFM can effectively measure stress relaxation and creep in living cells.

The method accurately calculates elastic moduli and viscosities.

Provides a unified framework for biomechanical property assessment.

Abstract

We show that the atomic force microscope can perform stress relaxation and creep compliance measurements on living cells. We propose a method to obtain the mechanical properties of the studied biomaterial: the relaxation time, the elastic moduli and the viscosity.