The real contact area, which is formed by a large ensemble of discrete contacts (clusters), is proven to be much smaller than the apparent surface area.
We also observe two shells of electron density, which we attribute to a structurally ordered part of the viral genome, and discrete contacts between this density and both VP1 and the minor capsid proteins.
In general, continuous crisscrossing metal lines, deposited through e.g. photolithography, provide the best intra-film current collection while small, regularly spaced discrete contacts, provided by e.g. a metal mesh, provide less efficient intra-film current collection.
In this study, the effect of multiple discrete contacts on the breakage of grain particles was investigated by crushing coarse grains of a quartz sand and a crushed limestone sand between a number of support particles, thereby varying the number of contacts, i.e., the coordination number.
Our SEM experiments suggest that non-aligned filopodia only form discrete contacts with ECM molecules on the top of ridges, whereas aligned filopodia can form a more intimate interaction zone with the ridges (Fig. 2G, depicted in Fig. 6A and B).
