Category: News

Piezoelectricity of green carp scales

Today is Children’s Day in Japan and many mulit-colored carp-shaped koinobori streamers are fluttering in the wind.

So it is the perfect day to repost and share the publication “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales” by Y. Jiang et al. with you.

Piezoelectricity takes part in multiple important functions and processes in biomaterials often vital to the survival of organisms. In their publication , “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales” Y. Jiang et al. investigate the piezoelectric properties of fish scales of green carp by directly examining their morphology at nanometer levels. From the clear distinctions between the composition of the inner and outer surfaces of the scales that could be found, the authors identified the piezoelectricity to originate from the presence of hydroxyapatite which only exists on the surface of the fish scales.*

koinobori - carp streamers on children's day in Matsumoto Japan
koinobori – carp streamers on children’s day in Matsumoto Japan

These findings reveal a different mechanism of how green carp are sensitive to their surroundings and should be helpful to studies related to the electromechanical properties of marine life and the development of bio-inspired materials. As easily accessible natural polymers, fish scales can be employed as highly sensitive piezoelectric materials in high sensitive and high speed devices as well as be exploited for invasive diagnostics and other biomedical implications.*

For the harmonic responses of both 1st order and 2nd order described in this publication, NanoWorld Arrow-CONTPt AFM probes were used.

FIG. 6 from “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales “ by H. Y. Jiang et al.: First and second harmonic responses of (a) domain I and (b) domain IV. The straight line fitting for the amplitude of first harmonic response of (c) domain I and (d) domain IV by applying a series of bias. NanoWorld Arrow-CONTPt AFM probes were used.
FIG. 6 from “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales “ by H. Y. Jiang et al.: First and second harmonic responses of (a) domain I and (b) domain IV. The straight line fitting for the amplitude of first harmonic response of (c) domain I and (d) domain IV by applying a series of bias.

*Y. Jiang, F. Yen, C. W. Huang, R. B. Mei, and L. Chen
Piezoelectricity of green carp scales
AIP Advances 7, 045215 (2017)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4979503

Please follow this external link to access the full article: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4979503

Open Access The article “Piezoelectricity of green carp scales” by Y. Jiang, F. Yen, C. W. Huang, R. B. Mei and L. Chen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carbon Dating AFM Tip Style

Have you every wondered how carbon dating in the AFM tip world works?

Cartoon of a nanotools HDC AFM tip and a NanoWorld CDT AFM tip meeting for cheese fondue and complaining how carbonized and peaky they are because they have been under a lot of pressure
Our take on carbon dating in the AFM tip world. Enjoy and have a great 1st of April!

Actin filaments on Mica with APTES

Courtesy of Prof. Noriyuki Kodera, nanoLSI, Kanazawa University, Japan we could upload two new images and a very nice High Speed Atomic Force Microscopy (HS-AFM) video of Actin filaments on Mica with APTES to the image gallery and the video gallery on https://www.highspeedscanning.com/.

NanoWorld USC-F1.2-k0.15 Ultra-Short AFM cantilevers [C = 0.15 N/m; fo = 1200 kHz] were used for the high speed imaging.

HS-AFM Images of actin filaments on Mica with APTES. Buffer:100 mM KCl, 2 mM MgCl2, 1 mM EGTA, 20 mM Imidazole-HCl, pH7.6 (a) 250×250 nm2 and (b) 400×400 nm2. Image courtesy of Prof. Kodera, nanoLSI, Kanazawa University, Japan. NanoWorld USC-F1.2-k0.15 AFM probes from the Ultra-Short Cantilever (USC) series were used for the High Speed Atomic Force Microscopy
HS-AFM Images of actin filaments on Mica with APTES. Buffer:100 mM KCl, 2 mM MgCl2, 1 mM EGTA, 20 mM Imidazole-HCl, pH7.6 (a) 250×250 nm2 and (b) 400×400 nm2. Images courtesy of Prof. Kodera, nanoLSI, Kanazawa University, Japan. NanoWorld USC-F1.2-k0.15 AFM probes were used for the High Speed Atomic Force Microscopy

The HighSpeedScanning webpage is dedicated to presenting information about ultra high frequency AFM probe solutions for High Speed AFM ranging from already commercialized AFM probes such as the ArrowTM UHF and NanoWorld Ultra-Short Cantilever (USC) series to AFM probes that are still under development.

Additionally to the High-Speed AFM images and videos researchers worldwide kindly have provided us with so that we can share them with the whole High Speed AFM community you will also find  a list of links and references dedicated to High-Speed AFM on https://www.highspeedscanning.com/high-speed-scanning.html 

We are aware that these lists are far from complete and we are constantly working on keepting them up to date.  If your research institute or company is working with High Speed AFM (HS-AFM) using our AFM probes or if you have published articles with images that were achieved with our High Speed AFM probes annd you find that are missing from our list then please let us know via email: info@highspeedscanning.com if you would like us to add them to the list of references .