2008/10/23 by Oded Farago · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #Nanopore and Nanochannel Transport Studies #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.78.051919
published as Phys. Rev. E 78, 051919 (2008). · Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. E
arxiv created 2008/10/23 · openalex publication_date 2008/11/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We use analytical calculations and Monte Carlo simulations to determine the thermal fluctuation spectrum of a membrane patch of a few tens of nanometer in size, whose corners are located at a fixed distance d above a plane rigid surface. Our analysis shows that the surface influence on the bilayer fluctuations can be effectively described in terms of a uniform confining potential that grows quadratically with the height of the membrane h relative to the surface: V=(1/2)gammah2. The strength gamma of the harmonic confining potential vanishes when the corners of the membrane patch are placed directly on the surface (d=0), and achieves its maximum value when d is of the order of a few nanometers. However, even at maximum strength, the confinement effect is quite small and has a noticeable impact only on the amplitude of the largest bending mode.