STRETCHING YOUR OWN PLANTS

摘要

We have carried out uniaxial deformation experiments on our own plant cell wall-like material, aimed at understanding how the biopolymers present in the cell wall influence the mechanical properties of the wall. Previous work on cell walls has often used destructive techniques such as TEM and chemical analysis. Instead, we have concentrated on the use of non-destructive methods such as Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy (ESEM) and X-ray diffraction that require no sample preparation. These also have the advantage that deformation experiments can be performed in-situ.