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Updated: Mar 27, 2026

Direct Force Measurements of Subcellular Mechanics in Confinement using Optical Tweezers
Published on: August 31, 2021
Characterising the nanoscale kinetic friction using force-equilibrium and energy-conservation models with optical
Hongtao Xie1, Shiliang Wang, Han Huang
1School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
Abstract:
SiC nanowires were manipulated under an optic microscope to investigate the nanoscale friction between nanowires and a flat substrate. The deflection of the nanowires was modeled as that of an Euler-Bernoulli beam subjected to a uniformly distributed load. A simple formula was developed to calculate the kinetic friction from the normalized deflections at the two ends of a nanowire. The frictional force per unit area determined ranges from 0.18-0.51 MPa. Both experimental and simulated results demonstrated that the proposed approach was reliable. The results were also compared with those estimated using an energy-conservation model, which produced a frictional force ranging from 0.21-0.62 MPa. The results obtained from the two different methods are in excellent agreement.
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