Abstract
The solvent-assisted lipid bilayer (SALB) formation method provides a simple and efficient, microfluidic-based strategy to fabricate supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) with rich compositional diversity on a wide range of solid supports. While various studies have been performed to characterize SLBs formed using the SALB method, relatively limited work has been carried out to understand the underlying mechanisms of SALB formation under various experimental conditions. Through thermodynamic modeling, we studied the experimental parameters that affect the SALB formation process, including substrate surface properties, initial lipid concentration, and temperature. It was found that all the parameters are critically important to successfully form high-quality SLBs. The model also helps to identify the range of parameter space within which conformal, homogeneous SLBs can be fabricated, and provides mechanistic guidance to optimize experimental conditions for lipid membrane-related applications.
Highlights
The LB technique relies on the transfer of lipid bilayers formed at the air-water interface to a solid substrate as it is vertically immersed into the liquid
Using the solvent-assisted lipid bilayer (SALB) method, supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) can form on silicon dioxide and alkanethiol-coated substrates as shown
In our earlier experiments [24,27,30,32], the amount of adsorbed phospholipids on the substrate was monitored in real time by using the quartz crystal microbalance-dissi pation (QCM-D) monitoring technique [40,41], which allowed us to record the resonanc frequency shift and measure lipid layer formation with nanoscale resolution
Summary
Supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) have received extensive attention from researchers due to their ability to faithfully mimic biological membranes [1,2,3,4]. SLBs can be used to investigate lipid membrane-mediated biological processes in vitro in a controlled manner [5,6,7], for biofunctionalization of inorganic solid substrates for biocompatibility [8,9], and in many other applications such as programmed drug delivery [10] and biosensing [11,12]. The LB technique relies on the transfer of lipid bilayers formed at the air-water interface to a solid substrate as it is vertically immersed into the liquid This method is prone to producing low-quality SLBs with holes and decoupled leaflets, limiting their usefulness [16]. Previous experiments have identified several parameters that that could affect the outcome of the SALB fabrication, including the lipid concentration in could affect the outcome of the SALB fabrication, including the lipid concentration in the the organic solvent, substrate material, and temperature [24,27,30].
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