Abstract
Electromechanical coupling is ubiquitous in biological systems, with examples ranging fromsimple piezoelectricity in calcified and connective tissues to voltage-gated ion channels,energy storage in mitochondria, and electromechanical activity in cardiac myocytes andouter hair cell stereocilia. Piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) originally emerged as atechnique to study electromechanical phenomena in ferroelectric materials, and in recentyears has been employed to study a broad range of non-ferroelectric polar materials,including piezoelectric biomaterials. At the same time, the technique has been extendedfrom ambient to liquid imaging on model ferroelectric systems. Here, we present resultson local electromechanical probing of several model cellular and biomolecularsystems, including insulin and lysozyme amyloid fibrils, breast adenocarcinomacells, and bacteriorhodopsin in a liquid environment. The specific features ofPFM operation in liquid are delineated and bottlenecks on the route towardsnanometre-resolution electromechanical imaging of biological systems are identified.
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