Mechanical responses bending stiffness

The tensile strength and stress of the IPMC are measured in the same manner as those of the IP. The bending stiffness of a fully hydrated IPMC sample is estimated using the free oscillation attenuation method. By bending the sample to the appropriate initial displacement, the free vibration response can be recorded. The natural frequency of the cantilever, is obtained from the fast Fourier transform of the free vibration response curve. The stiffness of the IPMC, Egg, is determined using Eq. 4, which is based on the thin cantilever beam theory of material mechanics ... 

As discussed in Sect. 2.2.2, FMM images can lose the material contrast when the sample stiffness exceeds the stiffness of the cantilever. In addition, the net signal contains friction effects because of the cantilever bending and the sample indentation. Furthermore, in liquid samples, capillary forces dominate the response at low frequencies [ 127]. These drawbacks can be overcome by operating the microscope above the contact resonance frequencies. In the so-called con-tact-mode scanning local-acceleration microscope the cantilever oscillates at very low amplitudes of ca. 0.1 nm which still provides strong enough contrast with respect to the mechanical properties [122]. Since the response of the canti-... 

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