# Contact Mechanics of a Small Icosahedral Virus

## TL;DR

This study investigates how substrate-induced deformation affects the mechanical response of small icosahedral viruses upon adsorption, using atomic force microscopy and a continuum model to estimate elastic properties and interfacial energy.

## Contribution

It introduces a continuum model to analyze virus deformation during adsorption, providing a new method to estimate elastic properties without indentation.

## Key findings

- Height change distributions reveal virus deformation upon adsorption.
- The model accurately fits experimental data to estimate elastic properties.
- Interfacial energy between virus and substrate is quantified.

## Abstract

Virus binding to a surface results at least locally, at the contact area, in stress and potential structural perturbation of the virus cage. Here we address the question of the role of substrate-induced deformation in the overall virus mechanical response to the adsorption event. This question may be especially important for the broad category of viruses that have their shells stabilized by weak, non-covalent interactions. We utilize atomic force microscopy to measure the height change distributions of the brome mosaic virus upon adsorption from liquid on atomically flat substrates and present a continuum model which captures well the behavior. Height data fitting according the model provides, without recourse to indentation, estimates of virus elastic properties and of the interfacial energy.