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This work investigates droplet-evaporated cellulose nanofiber (CNF) alignment and cell responses on CNF surfaces. Surfaces of unmodified (u-), anionic (a-), and cationic (c-) CNFs were fabricated using an evaporation-induced droplet-casting method and characterized in terms of degree of orientation. Circular variance (CV) values obtained using Cytospectre software to analyze the degree of orientation from AFM images showed a significantly higher degree of orientation on c- and u-CNF surfaces (average CV 0.27 and 0.24, respectively) compared to a-CNF surfaces (average CV 0.76). Quantitative analysis of surface roughness plots obtained from AFM images confirmed the difference between the direction of alignment versus the direction perpendicular to alignment. AFM images as well as observations during droplet evaporation indicated c-CNF alignment parallel to a dry-boundary line during droplet evaporation. Fibroblasts were cultured on the u-, a-, and c-CNF surfaces with or without a fibronectin (FN) coating for 48 h, and the cell response was evaluated in terms of cell viability, proliferation, morphology, and degree of orientation. Cell viability and proliferation were comparable to that on a control surface on the a-CNF and c-CNF surfaces. Although an FN coating slightly enhanced cell growth on the studied surfaces, uncoated a-CNF and c-CNF surfaces were able to support cell growth as well. The results showed cell orientation on aligned c-CNF surfaces, a finding that could be further utilized when guiding the growth of cells. We also showed that the alignment direction of c-CNFs and thus the cell orientation direction can be controlled with a contact-dispensing technique. acceptedVersion

Self-standing films (45-μm thick) of native cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) were synthesized and characterized for their piezoelectric response. The surface and the microstructure of the films were evaluated with image-based analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The measured dielectric properties of the films at 1 kHz and 9.97 GHz indicated a relative permittivity of 3.47 and 3.38 and loss tangent tan δ of 0.011 and 0.071, respectively. The films were used as functional sensing layers in piezoelectric sensors with corresponding sensitivities of 4.7 to 6.4 pC/N in ambient conditions. This piezoelectric response is expected to increase remarkably upon film polarization resulting from the alignment of the cellulose crystalline regions in the film. The CNF sensor characteristics were compared with those of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as reference piezoelectric polymer. Overall, the results suggest that CNF is a suitable precursor material for disposable piezoelectric sensors, actuator or energy generators with potential applications in the fields of electronics, sensors and biomedical diagnostics. submittedVersion

Solution-processable graphene and carbon nanotube-based electrode materials were used here to provide electrodes on flexible piezoelectric polyvinylidenefluoride sensors. Piezoelectric sensitivity measurements, image-based analysis, adhesion tests, and sheet resistance measurements were applied to these printable sensors to rigorously analyze their performance and structure. The printable sensors showed electrical performance similar to metallized sensors, whereas the adhesion of the solution-processed materials to the substrate is not as high as that of the evaporated metal films. This also affects the measured sensor sensitivity values. The measurements based on optical images were found to be a promising method to capture detailed information about the electrode surface structure. acceptedVersion

Most printed material is produced by printing halftone dot patterns. One of the key issues that determine the attainable print quality is the structure of the paper surface, but the relation is non-deterministic in nature. We examine the halftone print quality and study the statistical dependence between the defects in printed dots and the topography measurement of the unprinted paper. The work concerns SC paper samples printed by an IGT gravure test printer. We have small-scale 2D measurements of the unprinted paper surface topography and the reflectance of the print result. The measurements before and after printing are aligned with subpixel resolution, and individual printed dots are detected. First, the quality of the printed dots is studied using Self Organizing Map and clustering and the properties of the corresponding areas in the unprinted topography are examined. The printed dots are divided into high and low print quality. Features from the unprinted paper surface topography are then used to classify the corresponding paper areas using Support Vector Machine classification. The results show that the topography of the paper can explain some of the print defects. However, there are many other factors that affect the print quality, and the topography alone is not adequate to predict the print quality.

Printing papers constitute 45 % of the global paper consumption. As printed products compete with electronic media, printability has become increasingly important as a cost-efficiency factor. It refers to the properties of the paper that ensure trouble-free running through the printing machine and high print quality. The treatment of printability in this thesis is constrained to print quality. The focus is on the dependences between print unevenness caused by small-scale print defects and the local characteristics of paper surface. The dependences are sought using image based measurements. A set of probabilistic analysis methods is proposed and applied to 2D maps of print reflectance and surface topography. A cross-correlation based image registration procedure is first presented to align the images acquired before and after printing. The large amount of data in the aligned images is used to estimate the joint probability density of print reflectance and surface topography. As the probability density deviates from that of multivariate normal distribution, Gaussian mixture modeling is chosen as a flexible parametric representation of the density estimate. The statistical dependence between print reflectance and surface topography is then quantified by mutual information, thus avoiding any assumptions about the linear or nonlinear nature of the dependence. The results from offset printed newsprint and gravure printed supercalendered papers suggest that linear models cannot entirely capture the dependences. The presented analyses are largely concentrated on the low probability tail areas of the distributions that correspond to the abnormally high print reflectance values and deep depressions on the paper surface. Presenting the locations of these extreme values as anomaly maps allows the evaluation of the conditional probability of finding missing ink in regions that exhibit abnormal behavior of surface topography. The results indicate that missing ink in the examined samples is considerably more probable in regions of abnormal surface topography than in randomly selected regions. As expected, however, a majority of the missing ink spots are attributed to other reasons than surface depressions. Anomaly maps are also used to select subsets of the multivariate data, and mutual information is evaluated in these subsets. The dependences expressed by mutual information are weak, but simulations verify that they are statistically significant. The capability of the surface topography values to explain print reflectance is higher in the most abnormal points of topography than overall in the images. The photometric stereo principle applied in this work is a fast method for acquiring surface topography maps that, based on the results, carry information about the printability of the paper. In addition, the probabilistic methods are expected to be applicable to several property maps besides print reflectance and surface topography. The characterization of the probabilistic dependences serves the Bayesian modeling of print quality as a combination of attributes related to the unprinted and printed paper.

The psychological complexity of multivariate image quality evaluation makes it difficult to develop general image quality metrics. Quality evaluation includes several mental processes and ignoring these processes and the use of a few test images can lead to biased results. By using a qualitative/quantitative (Interpretation Based Quality, IBQ) methodology, we examined the process of pair-wise comparison in a setting, where the quality of the images printed by laser printer on different paper grades was evaluated. Test image consisted of a picture of a table covered with several objects. Three other images were also used, photographs of a woman, cityscape and countryside. In addition to the pair-wise comparisons, observers (N=10) were interviewed about the subjective quality attributes they used in making their quality decisions. An examination of the individual pair-wise comparisons revealed serious inconsistencies in observers' evaluations on the test image content, but not on other contexts. The qualitative analysis showed that this inconsistency was due to the observers' focus of attention. The lack of easily recognizable context in the test image may have contributed to this inconsistency. To obtain reliable knowledge of the effect of image context or attention on subjective image quality, a qualitative methodology is needed.

Due to the rise in performance of digital printing, image-based applications are gaining popularity. This creates needs for specifying the quality potential of printers and materials in more detail than before. Both production and end-use standpoints are relevant. This paper gives an overview of an on-going study which has the goal of determining a framework model for the visual quality potential of paper in color image printing. The approach is top-down and it is founded on the concept of a layered network model. The model and its subjective, objective and instrumental measurement layers are discussed. Some preliminary findings are presented. These are based on data from samples obtained by printing natural image contents and simple test fields on a wide range of paper grades by ink-jet in a color managed process. Color profiles were paper specific. Visual mean opinion score data by human observers could be accounted for by two or three dimensions. In the first place these are related to brightness and color brightness. Image content has a marked effect on the dimensions. This underlines the challenges in designing the test images.

The results of optical surface topography measurement techniques have been questioned in the past because of possible measurement artifacts due to light penetration into the paper. We compared the topography measurement results from five optical techniques: laser profilometry, shape-from-focus, stripe projection, chromatic sensing, and photometric stereo. These techniques were tested on coated and uncoated papers with a PPS roughness range from 0.7 μm to 7.7 μm. We made the measurement results directly comparable by measuring exactly the same regions on the paper samples and registering the resulting topography maps. We then calculated the point-wise Pearson correlation between the maps at different wavelength bands to obtain quantitative values for the similarity of the measurement results at different structure sizes. The correspondences between the measured topography maps were also examined through multivariate linear regression and roughness indices evaluated at two different structure sizes. For rougher grades like office paper or sack paper, the topography measurements from the five measurement techniques showed corresponding results. For a moderately smooth lightweight coated (LWC) paper, the measured topographies agreed to some degree, and for smooth supercalendered (SC) and woodfree coated (WFC) papers, the agreement was poor. From the available data, it is impossible to tell which of the measurement techniques delivers the true surface topography of smooth papers. acceptedVersion

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This paper describes a photometric stereo system for the measurement of surface topography. The system provides versatile experimental possibilities due to movable multicolor LEDs, movable camera, and a traveling (xy-)table for the sample. We introduce our measurement setup and present analysis of its performance. Our topography maps correlate well with the contact profilometry reference map, and reveal different details of the surfaces depending on the illumination wavelength and pixel size. submittedVersion

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