Fabrication and application of nanofork for measuring single cells adhesion force inside ESEM

Abstract

Cell-substrate adhesion and cell-cell adhesion are very important in promoting other cell activities such as cell proliferation and cell differentiation [1]. Furthermore, the knowledge of the cell adhesion force can be used in various applications such as in the determination of the cell viability and the evaluation of the quality of the artificial scaffold. Although there are several force measurement techniques available, e.g. atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilever [2], optical tweezer [3] and micropipette, these techniques are difficult to be implemented directly when dealing with the cell adhesion measurement.