Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 31: Poster - Pattern Formation

DY 31.11: Poster

Tuesday, March 8, 2016, 18:15–21:00, Poster C

Membrane instability driven by an ac electric field — •Mirko Ruppert¹, Walter Zimmermann¹, and Falko Ziebert^1,2 — ¹Theoretische Physik, Universität Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany — ²Physikalisches Institut, Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

Unilamellar vesicles are important model systems in biophysics. They are typically created by applying a voltage on a stack of membrane bilayers, but this so-called electroformation process is still poorly understood. Models exist for the case of a static (dc) electric field, but experimentally typically ac fields of about 10 Hz have to be used. We therefore study the ac field-induced instability of a capacitive membrane, using an effective zero-thickness model developed previously in the dc case. The instability of the membrane is driven by the charge accumulation in the Debye layers. Increasing the driving frequency reduces this effect. A full Floquet analysis of the coupled Poisson-Nernst-Planck-Stokes boundary value problem is under way.