Solid-supported lipid multilayers: Structure factor and fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical model for thermal fluctuations in solid-supported lipid multilayers, successfully applying it to experimental reflectivity and scattering data, and comparing it with existing theories.

Contribution

It introduces a new theoretical framework for lipid multilayer fluctuations under zero surface tension, validated against experimental data and prior models.

Findings

Model accurately fits reflectivity profiles of thin lipid stacks.

Model explains diffuse scattering in thick lipid stacks.

Comparison shows advantages over previous theories.

Abstract

We present a theoretical description of the thermal fluctuations in a solid-supported stack of lipid bilayers, for the case of vanishing surface tension $\gamma = 0$ and in the framework of continuous smectic elasticity. The model is successfully used to model the reflectivity profile of a thin (16 bilayers) DMPC sample under applied osmotic pressure and the diffuse scattering from a thick (800 bilayers) stack. We compare our model to previously existing theories.