AFM Investigation of Liquid-Filled Polymer Microcapsules Elasticity.

Elasticity of polymer microcapsules (MCs) filled with a liquid fluorinated core is studied by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Accurately characterized spherical tips are employed to obtain the Young's moduli of MCs having four different shell thicknesses. We show that those moduli are effective ones because the samples are composites. The strong decrease of the effective MC elasticity (from 3.0 to 0.1 GPa) as the shell thickness decreases (from 200 to 10 nm) is analyzed using a novel numerical approach. This model describes the evolution of the elasticity of a coated half-space according to the contact radius, the thickness of the film, and the elastic moduli of bulk materials. This numerical model is consistent with the experimental data and allows simulating the elastic behavior of MCs at high frequencies (5 MHz). While the quasi-static elasticity of the MCs is found to be very dependent on the shell thickness, the high frequency (5 MHz) elastic behavior of the core leads to a stable behavior of the MCs (from 2.5 to 3 GPa according to the shell thickness). Finally, the effect of thermal annealing on the MCs elasticity is investigated. The Young's modulus is found to decrease because of the reduction of the shell thickness due to the loss of the polymer.

Investigation of PDMS based bi-layer elasticity via interpretation of apparent Young's modulus.

As the need of new methods for the investigation of thin films on various kinds of substrates becomes greater, a novel approach based on AFM nanoindentation is explored. Substrates of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) coated by a layer of hard material are probed with an AFM tip in order to obtain the force profile as a function of the indentation. The equivalent elasticity of those composite systems is interpreted using a new numerical approach, the Coated Half-Space Indentation Model of Elastic Response (CHIMER), in order to extract the thicknesses of the upper layer. Two kinds of coating are investigated. First, chitosan films of known thicknesses between 30 and 200 nm were probed in order to test the model. A second type of samples is produced by oxygen plasma oxidation of the PDMS substrate, which results in the growth of a relatively homogeneous oxide layer. The local nature of this protocol enables measurements at long oxidation time, where the apparition of cracks prevents other kinds of measurements.