Nanomechanical mass and viscosity measurement-platform for cell imaging

In this thesis, a novel imaging platform using silicon-nitride membranes as nanomechanical resonator is presented. The basic theory lies in the determination of the
mass, the stiffness and the viscosity of randomly distributed mass points lying on the
transducer. The first step of the development was to build a nanomechanical sensing
platform, which was able to characterize a homogeneous fluid. The determined
physical properties are namely the mass density ρ and the dynamic viscosity η.
These properties deliver suitable information about the fluid dynamics: the change
in viscosity could for example be used to investigate protein aggregation or filament
formation.