Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

The DPG Spring Meeting in Dresden had to be cancelled! Read more ...

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 9: Poster II

BP 9.15: Poster

Monday, March 16, 2020, 17:30–19:30, P2/2OG

Simultaneous measurement of surface and bilayer tension in a microfluidic chip — •Navid Khangholi, Ralf Seemann, and Jean-Baptiste Fleury — Experimental Physics and Center for Biophysics, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

Free-standing lipid bilayers are one of the most used model systems to mimic biological cell membranes. To form an unsupported bilayer, we employ two aqueous fingers in a microfluidic chip surrounded by an oily phase that contains lipids. Upon pushing two aqueous fingers forward, their interface gets decorated with a lipid monolayer and eventually zip to form a bilayer when the monolayers get in nanoscopic contact to each other. Using this straight forward approach, the easy and fast bilayer formation is facilitated by oil draining into the microfluidic device material consisting of PDMS. On the other hand, the oil drainage limits the lifetime of a bilayer to about one hour. We demonstrate that this drainage can be managed resulting in superior bilayer stability and to an increased lifetime of several hours when using a pressure controlled system. Applying different pressures to the aqueous fingers in the microfluidic chip, the formed bilayer can even be bent with a desired curvature. Extracting the contact angle and the resulting curvature of the bilayer region, for a given applied pressure difference, both the bilayer tension and the surface tension of each lipid monolayers can be derived from a single experiment using Young Laplace pressure equation.