Related papers: Equilibrium insertion of nanoscale objects into ph…
Amphiphilic polymers in aqueous solutions can self-assemble to form bilayer membranes, and their elastic properties can be captured by the well-known Helfrich model involving several elastic constants. In this paper, we employ the…
The activity of cell membrane inclusions (such as ion channels) is influenced by the host lipid membrane, to which they are elastically coupled. This coupling concerns the hydrophobic thickness of the bilayer (imposed by the length of the…
Lipid nanoparticles own a remarkable potential in nanomedicine, only partially disclosed. While the clinical use of liposomes and cationic lipid-nucleic acid complexes is well-established, liquid lipid nanoparticles (nanoemulsions), solid…
We study a continuum model of the lipid bilayer based on minimizing the free energy of a mixture of water and lipid molecules. This paper extends previous work by Blom & Peletier (2004) in the following ways. (a) It formulates a more…
We develop a theoretical model for the solubilization of phospholipid bilayers by micelle-forming surfactants. Cylindrical micelles, disc-like micelles and spherical micelles are considered as alternative resultant structures. The main…
Self-consistent field theory (SCFT) has proven to be a powerful tool for modeling equilibrium microstructures of soft materials, particularly for multiblock polymers. A very successful approach to numerically solving the SCFT set of…
A model for the tensorial dielectric permittivity of phospholipid membranes is presented here. The four-nanometer-thick membrane is treated as a composite made up of three dielectric slabs: one for each of the two phospholipid head-group…
Learning from nature's amazing molecular machines, globular proteins, we present a framework for the predictive design of nano-machines. We show that the crucial ingredients for a chain molecule to behave as a machine are its inherent…
We consider the formation of finite-size domains in lipid bilayers consisting of saturated and hybrid lipids. First, we describe a monolayer model that includes a coupling between a compositional scalar field and a two-dimensional vectorial…
Single-chain nanoparticles (SCNP) are a new class of bio and soft-matter polymeric objects in which a fraction of the monomers are able to form equivalently intra- or inter-polymer bonds. Here we numerically show that a fully-entropic…
Bending rigidity, k, is classically measured for lipid membranes to characterize their nanoscale mechanical properties as a function of composition. Widely employed as a comparative tool, it helps understanding the relationship between the…
Multicomponent lipid mixtures exhibit complex phase behavior, including coexistence of nanoscopic fluid phases in ternary mixtures mimicking the composition of the outer leaflet of mammalian plasma membrane. The physical mechanisms…
The structural features of polystyrene brushes grafted on spherical silica nanoparticles immersed in polystyrene are investigated by means of a Monte Carlo methodology based on polymer mean field theory. The nanoparticle radii (either 8 nm…
We propose a very simple but 'realistic' model of amphiphilic bilayers,simple enough to be able to include a large number of molecules in the sample, but nevertheless detailed enough to include molecular charge distributions, flexible…
The new insights into the atomic structure empower one to develop materials by a bottom-up approach. The study of colloids is profitable in many ways. Considering the research in this field is beneficial. Developing tiny metallic particles…
A brief review of the nanoscale free-electron model of metal nanowires is presented. This continuum description of metal nanostructures allows for a unified treatment of cohesive and conducting properties. Conductance channels act as…
The evanescent field of an optical nanofiber presents a versatile interface for the manipulation of micron-scale particles in dispersion. Here, we present a detailed study of the optical binding interactions of a pair of 3.13 $\mu$m SiO$_2$…
A novel two-leaflet description of lipid membranes is proposed. Within its framework, phase separation phenomena in multicomponent biological membranes are analyzed. As we show, interactions between the leaflets tend to suppress macroscopic…
We study equilibrium configurations of non-Euclidean plates, in which the reference metric is uniaxially periodic. This work is motivated by recent experiments on thin sheets of composite thermally responsive gels [1]. Such sheets bend…
The relevance of anisotropic interactions in colloidal systems has recently emerged in the context of the rational design of new soft materials. Patchy colloids of different shapes, patterns and functionalities are considered the new…