Nanomechanical Atomic Force Microscopy to Probe Cellular Microplastics Uptake and Distribution

The concerns regarding microplastics and nanoplastics pollution stimulate studies on the uptake and biodistribution of these emerging pollutants in vitro. Atomic force microscopy in nanomechanical PeakForce Tapping mode was used here to visualise the uptake and distribution of polystyrene spherical microplastics in human skin fibroblast. Particles down to 500 nm were imaged in whole fixed cells, the nanomechanical characterization allowed for differentiation between internalized and surface attached plastics. This study opens new avenues in microplastics toxicity research.

Theoretical and Experimental Study of the Phase Optimization of Tapping Mode Atomic Force Microscope

Phase image in tapping mode atomic force microscope (TM-AFM) results from various dissipation in microcantilever system. The phases mainly reflected the tip-sample contact dissipations which allowed the nanoscale characteristics to be distinguished. In this research investigation, two factors affecting the phase and phase contrast were analyzed. It was concluded from the theoretical and experimental results that the phases and phase contrasts in the TM-AFM were related to the excitation frequencies and energy dissipation of the system. For a two-component blend, it was theoretically and experimentally proven that there was an optimal excitation frequency for maximizing the phase contrast. Therefore, selecting the optimal excitation frequency could potentially improve the phase contrast results. In addition, only the key dissipation between the tip and sample was found to accurately reflect the sample properties. Meanwhile, the background dissipation could potentially reduce the contrasts of the phase images and even mask or distort the effective information in the phase images. In order to address the aforementioned issues, a self-excited method was adopted in this study in order to eliminate the influencing effects of the background dissipation on the phases. Subsequently, the real phase information of the samples was successfully obtained. It was considered in this study that eliminating the background dissipation had effectively improved the phase contrast results and the real phase information of the samples was accurately reflected. These results are of great significance to optimize the phase of two-component samples and multi-component samples in atomic force microscope.