Advanced Analysis of the Mechanical and Viscoelastic Properties of Polymeric Materials

In the last few years, the use of SPM techniques in many areas of research has greatly increased. Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) is one of the main tools responsible for the emergence of novel soft functional materials and for the characterization of their physical properties at the nanoscale.<br/>Advanced analysis at the nanoscale helps us to solve various challenges we face with materials in the fields of energy harvesting, organic electronics, biosensors, self-assembly, biotechnology, life sciences, and nanomedicine to name but a few.<br/>The quantitative mapping of the actual mechanical properties of materials at the nanoscale constitutes a real challenge for professionals.<br/>The number of collected observables is rapidly increasing and software programs are now mature enough to analyze data user-independently. Most of the existing imaging modes proposed by the manufacturers consider one of the contact mechanical models (among the few analytically available) for the entire acquisition.<br/>In this growing field of research, the contribution of the Laboratory for Physics of Nanomaterials and Energy (LPNE) at the University of Mons (UMONS), Belgium and Digital Surf, France mainly consists of finding the most appropriate contact mechanics model for each pixel using data clustering and mapping of material properties based on the approach–retract force curve analysis. MountainsSPIP® paired with the PyCAROS (Python Code for Approach and Retract force curve analysis of Organic and hybrid Soft materials) for addon was able to recalculate the mechanical properties such as the rigidity modulus and coefficient of correlation for deeper analysis, particularly statistical analysis, and to benefit from the software’s rendering capacities.<br/>During the talk, we will illustrate the capabilities of this approach on a polymer blend made of polystyrene (30%) and polycaprolactone (70%) using Peak Force Tapping (PFT) and nano Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (n-DMA) techniques. The polystyrene (PS) forms circular-shaped objects within the semi-crystalline matrix of the polycaprolactone (PCL).<br/>This process has been extended with success to many other materials including nanocomposites, hydrogels, block copolymers, cosmetics and bacteria.