A nanoscale Galvani experiment provides a new way to image and characterize biological tissue. In the 18th century, Italian physician and physicist Luigi Galvani caused a frog’s muscle to contract when he touched it with an electrically charged metal scalpel, and thereby made perhaps the first observation of electromechanical coupling in biological systems. The simplest of such couplings is piezoelectricity, in which voltage induces mechanical deformation and vice versa. Cellulose, collagen, and keratin are among the many biopolymers that exhibit piezoelectric behavior. At the November 2005 AVS meeting in Boston, Sergei Kalinin of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and his colleagues reported results from a technique named piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM), in which a voltage applied to the tip of a scanning probe microscope induces an electromechanical response that is determined by local molecular orientation. The researchers have imaged various tissues—including cartilage, the enamel and dentin of teeth, and deer antler—with...
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
1 January 2006
January 01 2006
Citation
Benjamin P. Stein; Ananoscale Galvani experiment. Physics Today 1 January 2006; 59 (1): 9. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2180147
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
PERSONAL SUBSCRIPTION
Purchase an annual subscription for $25. A subscription grants you access to all of Physics Today's current and backfile content.
23
Views