Abstract
The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of High Frequency Scanning Acoustic Microscopy (HF SAM) as a tool to characterize biological tissues. The HF SAM is shown to provide both imaging and quantitative stiffness measuring abilities. The plant cell wall is used as a test analog to study the influence on stiffness when one important structural component is removed from a complex polymer structure. In particular, the hypothesis of this work was that the biopolymer pectin may have a strong effect on the mechanical properties of primary plant cell walls. The technical approach was to use HF SAM to document the effect of pectinase enzyme treatment to remove pectin from onion primary cell wall. The novelty in this work was to demonstrate the capability of HF SAM in terms of a characteristic curve called the V(Z) signature. The results indicate a significant change in the V(Z) signature with time into the enzyme treatment. Thus the HF SAM method opens the door to a systematically nondestructive study of complex bio-polymer structures.
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