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Thermal Preconditioning of Membrane Stress to Control the Shapes of Ultrathin Crystals by Wan, Hao; Jeon, Geunwoong; Grason, Gregory M.; Santore, Maria M. is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Thermal Preconditioning of Membrane Stress to Control the Shapes of Ultrathin Crystals about?

We employ the phospholipid bilayer membranes of giant unilamellar vesicles as a free-standing environment for the growth of membrane-integrated ultrathin phospholipid crystals possessing a variety of shapes with 6-fold symmetry. Crystal growth within vesicle membranes, where more elaborate shapes grow on larger vesicles is dominated by the bending energy of the membrane itself, creating a means to manipulate crystal morphology. Here we demonstrate how cooling rate preconditions the membrane tension before nucleation, in turn regulating nucleation and growth, and directing the morphology of crystals by the time they are large enough to be visualized. The crystals retain their shapes during further growth through the two phase region. Experiments demonstrate this behavior for single crystals growing within the membrane of each vesicle, ultimately comprising up to 13% of the vesicle area and length scales of up to 50 microns. A model for stress evolution, employing only physical property data, reveals how the competition between thermal membrane contraction and water diffusion from tensed vesicles produces a size- and time-dependence of the membrane tension as a result of cooling hist

Author

Wan, Hao; Jeon, Geunwoong; Grason, Gregory M.; Santore, Maria M.

Published

2024

Language

EN