Author
Listed:
- Benhamou, M.
- Elhasnaoui, K.
- Kaidi, H.
- Chahid, M.
Abstract
We consider a bilayer membrane surrounded by small impurities, assumed to be attractive or repulsive. The purpose is a quantitative study of the effects of these impurities on the statistical properties of the supported membrane. Using the replica trick combined with a variational method, we compute the membrane mean-roughness and the height correlation function for almost-flat membranes, as functions of the primitive elastic constants of the membrane and some parameter that is proportional to the volume fraction of impurities and their interaction strength. As results, the attractive impurities increase the shape fluctuations due to the membrane undulations, while repulsive ones suppress these fluctuations. Second, we compute the equilibrium diameter of (spherical) vesicles surrounded by small random particles starting from the curvature equation. Third, the study is extended to a lamellar phase composed of two parallel fluid membranes, which are separated by a finite distance. This lamellar phase undergoes an unbinding transition. We demonstrate that the attractive impurities increase the unbinding critical temperature, while repulsive ones decrease this temperature. Finally, we say that the presence of small impurities in an aqueous medium may be a mechanism to suppress or to produce an unbinding transition, even the temperature and polarizability of the aqueous medium are fixed, in lamellar phases formed by parallel lipid bilayers.
Suggested Citation
Benhamou, M. & Elhasnaoui, K. & Kaidi, H. & Chahid, M., 2010.
"Statistical mechanics of bilayer membranes in troubled aqueous media,"
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(17), pages 3465-3475.
Handle:
RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:17:p:3465-3475
DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2010.03.049
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to
for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:17:p:3465-3475. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.