Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Human Intelligence Systems, Graduate School of Life Science and Systems Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech), Japan. Electronic address: at.tyousefi@gmail.com
  • 2 Nanotechnology & Catalysis Research Centre (NANOCAT), IPS Building, University Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Asia Pacific, Green Road, Dhaka-1215, Bangladesh
  • 4 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Mater Sci Eng C Mater Biol Appl, 2016 Feb;59:636-642.
PMID: 26652417 DOI: 10.1016/j.msec.2015.10.041

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are potentially ideal tips for atomic force microscopy (AFM) due to the robust mechanical properties, nanoscale diameter and also their ability to be functionalized by chemical and biological components at the tip ends. This contribution develops the idea of using CNTs as an AFM tip in computational analysis of the biological cells. The proposed software was ABAQUS 6.13 CAE/CEL provided by Dassault Systems, which is a powerful finite element (FE) tool to perform the numerical analysis and visualize the interactions between proposed tip and membrane of the cell. Finite element analysis employed for each section and displacement of the nodes located in the contact area was monitored by using an output database (ODB). Mooney-Rivlin hyperelastic model of the cell allows the simulation to obtain a new method for estimating the stiffness and spring constant of the cell. Stress and strain curve indicates the yield stress point which defines as a vertical stress and plan stress. Spring constant of the cell and the local stiffness was measured as well as the applied force of CNT-AFM tip on the contact area of the cell. This reliable integration of CNT-AFM tip process provides a new class of high performance nanoprobes for single biological cell analysis.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.