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Journal article

Self-consistent field theory for lipid-based liquid crystals: Hydrogen bonding effect

  • Lee, Won Bo Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
  • Mezzenga, Raffaele Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland - Nestlé Research Center, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Fredrickson, Glenn H. Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials and Materials Research Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
    20.02.2008
Published in:
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics. - 2008, vol. 128, no. 7, p. 074504
English A model to describe the self-assembly properties of aqueous blends of nonionic lipids is developed in the framework of self-consistent field theory (SCFT). Thermally reversible hydrogen bonding between lipid heads and water turns out to be a key factor in describing the lyotropic and thermotropic phase behavior of such systems. Our model includes reversible hydrogen bonding imposed in the context of the grand canonical ensemble and exact conditions of binding equilibrium. The lipid molecules are modeled as a rigid head and a flexible Gaussian tail, and the water molecules are treated explicitly. Here, we focus on systems where the lipid molecule has a relatively small hydrophilic head compared to the hydrophobic tail, such as monoolein in water. Experimentally, this system has both normal phase sequences (inverted hexagonal to inverted double gyroid cubic phase) and reverse phase sequences (lamellar to inverted double gyroid cubic phase) as the water volume fraction increases. From SCFT simulations of the model, two phase diagrams corresponding to temperature independent or dependent interaction parameters ϰ are constructed, which qualitatively capture the phase behavior of the monoolein-water mixture. The lattice parameters of the simulated mesophases are compared with the experimental values and are found to be in semiquantitative agreement. The role of various structural and solution parameters on the phase diagrams is also discussed.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département de Physique
Language
  • English
Classification
Chemistry
License
License undefined
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Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/300809
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