Microscopic mechanisms of deformation transfer in high dynamic range branched nanoparticle deformation sensors.

ABSTRACT: Nanoscale stress sensing is of crucial importance to biomechanics and other fields. An ideal stress sensor would have a large dynamic range to function in a variety of materials spanning orders of magnitude of local stresses. Here we show that tetrapod quantum dots (tQDs) exhibit excellent sensing versatility with stress-correlated signatures in a multitude of polymers. We further show that tQDs exhibit pressure coefficients, which increase with decreasing polymer stiffness, and vary >3 orders of magnitude. This high dynamic range allows tQDs to sense in matrices spanning >4 orders of magnitude in Young's modulus, ranging from compliant biological levels (~100 kPa) to stiffer structural polymers (~5 GPa). We use ligand exchange to tune filler-matrix interfaces, revealing that inverse senso

SUBMITTER: Raja SN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5861061 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature