Friction and durability of virgin and damaged skin with and without skin cream treatment using atomic force microscopy

• Bharat Bhushan,
• Si Chen and
• Shirong Ge

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 731–746, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.83

• cosmetics and drugs [23][24], rat skin has also been used as an animal model. Pig skin and rat skin have been compared for percutaneous absorption [25][26], epidermal barrier layer lipids and morphology [27][28]. Table 1 shows some surface characteristics of virgin rat and pig skin. The stratum corneum and

• data, which serve as quantified expressions of the surface characteristics, are shown in Figure 4a. The damaged skin has a higher roughness than virgin skin. After treatment with skin cream, the roughness of virgin skin and damaged skin decreased. The reasonable explanation is that the skin cream can

• skin is higher than virgin skin. After treatment, the coefficient of friction of virgin and damaged skin increases. The coefficient of friction of pig skin is higher than that of rat skin because of the different surface characteristics discussed earlier. Effect of velocity, normal load, relative