Strategies for the growth of self-assembled phospholipid adlayers

The creation of robust phospholipid adlayers is an important step in the development of biomimetic systems that contain and utilize trans-membrane proteins. The present methods for the creation of lipid bilayer structures, either by vesicle fusion or Langmuir–Blodgett/Langmuir–Schaefer deposition, produce lipid bilayer structures that are not bound strongly to the support on which they are deposited. While fluidity is an important property of lipid adlayer structures, the ability to form physically robust adlayers requires that some interaction more energetically favorable than physisorption be used to bind lipid adlayers. We have developed a means to bind lipid adlayers to interfaces through their phospholipid headgroups, utilizing metal ion complexation, with the strength of interaction and resulting quality of the monolayer being dependent on the identity of both the phospholipid and the metal ion used.