Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 17: Poster Session II

BP 17.74: Poster

Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 18:00–20:30, P4

Nanomechanical ultrastructure of native tendon tissue — Mario Zerson, Martin Dehnert, Paul Zech, Tiberius Klose, and •Robert Magerle — Fakultät für Naturwissenschaften, TU Chemnitz

Tendon tissue is a natural, high performance material in which type I collagen fibrils act as the load-bearing elements. The collagen fibrils are embedded in the tendon ground substance, a hydrophilic gel. Using AFM-based nanoindentation measurements, we study the nanomechanical ultrastructure of collagen fibrils in native tendon tissue obtained from the calcaneus (Achilles) tendon of chicken. The sample is exposed to a flow of humid air with controlled relative humidity to maintain the water content close to physiological conditions. We reconstruct 3D depth profiles from measured force–distance data and analyze the tip–sample interaction with a recently developed hysteresis model with return point memory (Soft Matter 2024, 20, 2831–2839). The latter describes the rate-independent nanoindentation response, which is dominated by an elasto-plastic deformation behavior. It allows us to quantify the elastic and dissipative contributions of the indentation response within individual collagen fibrils as well as in the contact regions between adjacent fibrils.

Keywords: Collagen; Tendon; Nanomechanics; Atomic Force Microscopy; 3D Depth Profiling