Surface Properties Inside Pitchers of the Tropical Pitcher Plant Nepenthes
- verfasst von
- Gerhard Poll, Bernd-Arno Behrens, Tim Matthias, Florian Pape
- Abstract
The tropical pitcher plant (nepenthes sp.) is a genus of carnivorous plants. The plant uses its pitchers to trap insects like ants, flies or small vertebrates and decompose them in a digestive fluid. Potential prey is attracted by scents and fall into the traps, where they cannot escape due to the slippery side walls. The inside of the pitchers is covered by waxy films to protect the traps and resulting in a smooth and slippery surface. The trapped insects have a weight ranging from approx. 0.1 mg to 100 mg featuring therefore vertical adhesive forces of approx. 0.05 to 10 mN [1]. Thus very small forces have to be applied when investigating the pitchers surface properties. To investigate the pitchers surface nano-scratch studies were performed applying a Bruker (formerly Hysitron) TI950 TriboIndenter. For the nano-scratch tests a spherical diamond cone tip with a radius of 300 nm was utilized. While the tip was moved over the surface with increasing load the coefficient of friction was recorded. As final load 100 µN were applied to the tip. Before and after the scratch tests scanning probe microscopic images were taken to investigate the pitchers surface topography. The results showed a very smooth surface with low coefficient of friction during the nano-scratch tests.
- Organisationseinheit(en)
-
Institut für Maschinenkonstruktion und Tribologie
Institut für Umformtechnik und Umformmaschinen
- Typ
- Poster
- Publikationsdatum
- 2019
- Publikationsstatus
- Veröffentlicht
- Elektronische Version(en)
-
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331283888_Surface_Properties_Inside_Pitchers_of_the_Tropical_Pitcher_Plant_Nepenthes (Zugang:
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