NANOMECHANICAL CHARACTERISATION OF THE WOOD CELL WALL USING ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY

Wood is produced in successive cylindrical layers during the radial secondary growth of a tree by a very thin layer of living cells that divide, called cambium, and located under the bark. Wood is composed of different kinds of cells, with a honeycomb-like cellular organisation, and each plays a particular role for the tree. From a mechanical point of view, fibres are the cells that compose the structure (skeleton) of the tree (Thibaut et al, 2001). Figure 1 shows the idealized multi-layere