Whole field decoupling of predistortion on polymeric cell force transducer

Microfabricated polymer transducers have been developed to study cell mechanics. The key principle is to quantify the deformations on the sensor arrays induced by cell contractions and convert them into force distributions. The simplifications in deformation measurements come from the basic assumption that the deformation is solely attributed to cell contractions triggered by chemical or electrical stimuli. The diffraction moiré fringes via two polymer gratings provide whole field evolutions of distortion/strain on soft-lithography fabricated substrates. We found that the moiré patterns are able to decouple predistortions which were traditionally thought to be solely caused by cell contractile forces.