RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Microinductor-Fused Atomic Force Microscopy Cantilevers for Dynamic Imaging and Multimodal Manipulation
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.05.13.444109
DO 10.1101/2021.05.13.444109
A1 Charilaos Mousoulis
A1 Xin Xu
A1 Robert L. Wilson
A1 Garrett Chado
A1 Joseph Wahlquist
A1 Mark P. Stoykovich
A1 Virginia L. Ferguson
A1 Babak Ziaie
A1 Corey P. Neu
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/05/16/2021.05.13.444109.abstract
AB Recent advances in atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging and force spectroscopy have demonstrated improvements in rapid acquisition of quantitative data for applications in materials science, surface characterization, and biology. However, conventional AFM technology is limited in detection sensitivity and the ability to excite at off-resonance frequencies restricting broad utility of the technology. Here we demonstrate new AFM cantilevers fabricated with a planar microcoil at the tip region, which can be used to generate or sense highly-localized magnetic fields. Torsion/bending actuation of the cantilevers is accomplished with simple experimental configurations, enabling quantitative and simultaneous mapping of both stiffness and friction at the sample surface with more than one order of magnitude improvement in compositional contrast. Our method is compatible with commercial AFM systems, allowing us to clearly resolve small stiffness and friction variations in copolymer and biological samples that were difficult to detect by conventional AFM methods. In combination with fluorescence microscopy, we also generated localized fields to selectively stimulate and monitor structural changes in viable cells with nm-scale detail. Hybrid AFM cantilevers may be useful to characterize a broad range of complex material surfaces, in addition to combined physical and chemical analyses of single cells and biological microenvironments.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.