Surface Nanomechanics of Coatings and Hydrogels

Abstract

Due to the increasing use of nanostructured materials and thin coatings as barrier materials, it has become of high importance to measure and understand material properties on the nm to 100 nm length scales. In this article we demonstrate and discuss how atomic force microscopy techniques can be used to this end. It is demonstrated that the classical analysis based on the assumption of a purely elastic material response is a fair approximation for relatively stiff coatings (elastic modulus order of GPa), whereas viscous responses must be considered for soft materials (apparent modulus order of MPa) such as hydrogels.