ASMI: An automated, low-cost indenter for soft matter

Dylan List; Alan Gardner; Isabella Claure; Joyce Y Wong; Keith A Brown

doi:10.1016/j.ohx.2024.e00601

ASMI: An automated, low-cost indenter for soft matter

HardwareX. 2024 Oct 23:20:e00601. doi: 10.1016/j.ohx.2024.e00601. eCollection 2024 Dec.

Authors

Dylan List¹, Alan Gardner¹, Isabella Claure², Joyce Y Wong^{2

3}, Keith A Brown^{1

4

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
² Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
³ Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Boston University, 15 St. Mary's Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
⁴ Physics Department, Boston University, 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA.

Abstract

The automated soft matter indenter (ASMI) is a platform for rapidly performing mechanical characterization of samples with elastic moduli in the range 7 kPa to 67 MPa with a sample acquisition time between 1 and 10 min. It is a low-cost system based upon open-source software, a modified mill, and an educational force sensor with a total bill of materials <$500. This system tests batches of up to 96 samples based on a standard well-plate sample holder without requiring any human intervention. Using the ASMI, users can obtain mechanical data in a programmable manner that enables high-throughput workflows, precisely testing time-dependent phenomena, and integration with other processing steps for closed-loop optimization.

Keywords: Laboratory Automation; Material Discovery; Mechanical Properties; Nanoindentation; Soft Materials.