Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-qxsvm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-23T10:58:53.860Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Late Stages of the Pearling Instability in Lipid Bilayers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2011

J. L. Goveas
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, Princeton, NJ 08544
S. T. Milner
Affiliation:
Exxon Research and Engineering, Route 22 East, Annandale, NJ 08801
W. B. Russel
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, Princeton, NJ 08544
Get access

Abstract

We have studied the late stages of the “pearling instability” in lipid bilayers, which is brought on by applying laser tweezers to a cylindrical vesicle. This produces a front that propagates down the vesicle, leaving behind it bilayer-covered droplets separated by thin tubes, which appear under the microscope as pearls on a string. At later times, the “pearls” are observed to drift slowly towards the “trap” (the spot where the tweezers are applied, into which the surfactant is drawn). We model the hydrodynamics of the drifting pearls as a combination of translation of the string of pearls, and “slipping” of the bilayer skin over the pearls, to relate the speed of the pearls to the underlying flux of the surfactant into the trap.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1. Bar-Ziv, R. and Moses, E., Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, p. 1392 (1994).Google Scholar
2. Nelson, P., Powers, T. and Seifert, U., Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, p. 3384 (1995).Google Scholar
3. Granek, R. and Olami, Z., J. Phys. II (France) 5, p. 1349 (1995).Google Scholar
4. Goldstein, R., Nelson, P., Powers, T. and Seifert, U., J. Phys. II (France) 6, p. 767 (1996).Google Scholar
5. Olmsted, P. and Mackintosh, F., submitted to J. Phys. II (France)Google Scholar
6. Lamb, H., Hydrodynamics, Dover, 1945 Ch. 11, Art. 336.Google Scholar
7. Happel, J. and Brenner, H., Low Reynolds Number Hydrodynamics, Noordhoff International Publishing, 1973 Ch.3, Section 2.Google Scholar
8. Landau, L. and Lifshitz, E., E., , Hydrodynamics Pergamon Press, 1987, p. 241.Google Scholar
9. Leal, G., Laminar Flow and Convective Transport Processes, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1992, 251.Google Scholar
10. Nelson, P., personal communicationGoogle Scholar