Abstract

Biofilms have a profound impact on the environment, human health and industrial systems. In order to manage and control them, it is important to measure their mechanical properties intact. Therefore, it has been proposed to grow the biofilms on the atomic force microscope prior to nanoindentation tests with the same probe. However, for nanoindentation of biofilm grown on spherical indenter itself, the existing nanoindentation models become invalid. Therefore, modified models have been proposed to describe the nanoindentation response of biofilm grown on a sphere based on finite element modelling. It was found that the applicability of the models depends on the biofilm thickness and constitutive mechanical models adopted for biofilms. The models developed here would enable more reliable determination of viscoelastic properties of biofilms that grow intact on the indenter itself.

Highlights

  • Biofilms are microorganisms in which cells attach and grow on a surface, and these cells are embedded in an extracellular polymeric matrix [1]

  • To further understand the nanoindentation responses of biofilms grown on the spherical To further understand the nanoindentation responses of biofilms grown on the spherical indenter, the representative von Mises stress contours in thinner biofilm (0.5 μm) with varied indenter, the representative von Mises stress contours in thinner biofilm (0.5 μm) with varied

  • It has been found that the effective radius is no longer constant and depends on the penetration depth and Poisson’s ratio, which is responsible for the deviation between the FEM and penetration depth and Poisson’s ratio, which isresponses responsible for the deviation the FEM

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Summary

Introduction

Biofilms are microorganisms in which cells attach and grow on a surface, and these cells are embedded in an extracellular polymeric matrix [1]. Nanoindentation, known as depth-sensing indentation, has been widely used to determine the mechanical properties of synthetic coatings [10] or biological thin films at nanoscale to microscale due to its small probe size [11,12,13,14]. In most studies, properties of biofilms were biofilms were after characterized they were from the material [23].itInmay suchaffect cases, it characterized they wereafter removed from removed the material surfaces [23] Insurfaces such cases, the may affect the integrity of the biofilms prior to mechanical testing. Was adopted to study the nanomechanical behavior of a biofilm finite element analysis (FEA) was adopted to study the nanomechanical behavior of a biofilm grown grown on a spherical theand linear and nonlinear viscoelastic properties of thin layer on a spherical indenter.indenter.

Finite
Linear Viscoelastic Model
Nonlinear Viscoelastic Model
Analytical Viscoelastic Model
New Predictive Model Based on the Analytical Viscoelastic Model
It can that the maximum
Results larger
Comparison of force-displacement curves of FEM
An Alternative Method
Discussion
Conclusions

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