Physical limits to sensing material properties.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33056989.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-18995-4 and PMC identifier 7560877.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
All materials respond heterogeneously at small scales, which limits what a sensor can learn. Although previous studies have characterized measurement noise arising from thermal fluctuations, the limits imposed by structural heterogeneity have remained unclear. In this paper, we find that the least fractional uncertainty with which a sensor can determine a material constant λ<sub>0</sub> of an elastic medium is approximately [Formula: see text] for a ≫ d ≫ ξ, [Formula: see text], and D > 1, where a is the size of the sensor, d is its spatial resolution, ξ is the correlation length of fluctuations in λ<sub>0</sub>, Δ<sub>λ</sub> is the local variability of λ<sub>0</sub>, and D is the dimension of the medium. Our results reveal how one can construct devices capable of sensing near these limits, e.g. for medical diagnostics. We use our theoretical framework to estimate the limits of mechanosensing in a biopolymer network, a sensory process involved in cellular behavior, medical diagnostics, and material fabrication.
Medical subject headings
- Biopolymers
- Biosensing Techniques
- Stimuli Responsive Polymers
- Uncertainty