https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-024-01259-3
Regular Article
Complete de-wetting of lipid membranes on silicon carbide
1
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296, Göteborg, Sweden
2
Department of Physics, University of Gothenburg, 41296, Göteborg, Sweden
3
Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, 0318, Oslo, Norway
d
irep@uio.no
e
aldo@chalmers.se
Received:
29
February
2024
Accepted:
18
July
2024
Published online:
21
August
2024
We report temperature-induced complete de-wetting of phospholipid membranes from thermally evaporated silicon carbide (SiC) substrates, which occurs in the form of fractal patterns. Excess membrane material released as a result of de-wetting, transforms into fluid-filled membrane pockets, or leads to vesicle formation. The membrane pockets are composed of a double lipid membrane. These double bilayer superstructures, i.e. isolated membrane-enclosed fluid volumes, bring the internal contents into direct contact with the surface. This membrane morphology can be viewed as an alternative prebiotic assembly mechanism with possible implications for protocell development, where physicochemical surface interactions with internal primitive cell contents are greatly facilitated.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-024-01259-3.
© The Author(s) 2024
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
