Quantifying High-Performance Material Microstructure Using Nanomechanical Tools with Visual and Frequency Analysis

Figure 3

(a) Transverse-stiffness AFM scan of SK76 UHMWPE with black arrows identifying individual fibrils with the fibril number expressed every five fibrils, green “+” symbols indicating local minima for identifying the limits of a fibril, red “|” symbols indicating the minima used identifying fibril bundles, and the blue line indicating the profile which is expressed in the graph below which has the corresponding symbols (black dots correspond to the black arrows). The dashed black line indicates the area that is magnified in (b) which has vertical red and black lines with matching stiffness profiles in (c). AFM scans were reprinted from [15] with permission from Elsevier.

(a)

(b)

(c)