| Issue |
EPL
Volume 114, Number 2, April 2016
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 28002 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/114/28002 | |
| Published online | 12 May 2016 | |
Nano-domain formation in charged membranes: Beyond the Debye-Hückel approximation
1 Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Metropolitan University Tokyo 192-0397, Japan
2 School of Materials Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology - Ishikawa 923-1292, Japan
Received: 4 March 2016
Accepted: 27 April 2016
We investigate the microphase separation in a membrane composed of charged lipids, by taking into account explicitly the electrostatic potential and the ion densities in the surrounding solvent. While the overall (membrane and solvent) charge neutrality is assumed, the membrane can have a non-zero net charge. The static structure factor in the homogeneous state is analytically obtained without using the Debye-Hückel approximation and is found to have a peak at an intermediate wave number. For a binary membrane composed of anionic and neutral lipids, the characteristic wave number corresponds to a scale from several to tens of nanometers. Our numerical calculation further predicts the existence of nano-domains in charged membranes.
PACS: 87.16.D- – Membranes, bilayers, and vesicles / 82.45.Gj – Electrolytes / 87.16.dt – Structure, static correlations, domains, and rafts
© EPLA, 2016
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