# The irreversible thermodynamics of curved lipid membranes

## TL;DR

This paper develops a thermodynamic framework for curved lipid membranes, analyzing how elastic bending couples with processes like lipid flow, phase transitions, and protein interactions, providing governing equations and entropy production insights.

## Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive irreversible thermodynamics model for curved lipid membranes, linking elastic and dissipative processes with explicit equations and boundary conditions.

## Key findings

- Derived entropy production forms for membrane processes
- Identified thermodynamic forces and fluxes in membranes
- Provided governing equations for membrane dynamics

## Abstract

The theory of irreversible thermodynamics for arbitrarily curved lipid membranes is presented here. The coupling between elastic bending and irreversible processes such as intra-membrane lipid flow, intra-membrane phase transitions, and protein binding and diffusion is studied. The forms of the entropy production for the irreversible processes are obtained, and the corresponding thermodynamic forces and fluxes are identified. Employing the linear irreversible thermodynamic framework, the governing equations of motion along with appropriate boundary conditions are provided.