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Revision: 3147
Committed: Mon Jun 25 21:16:17 2007 UTC (17 years, 2 months ago) by xsun
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create mdRipple

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# User Rev Content
1 xsun 3147 %\documentclass[aps,pre,twocolumn,amssymb,showpacs,floatfix]{revtex4}
2     \documentclass[aps,pre,preprint,amssymb,showpacs]{revtex4}
3     \usepackage{graphicx}
4    
5     \begin{document}
6     \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}}
7     \renewcommand{\theequation}{\arabic{section}.\arabic{equation}}
8    
9     %\bibliographystyle{aps}
10    
11     \title{}
12     \author{Xiuquan Sun and J. Daniel Gezelter}
13     \email[E-mail:]{gezelter@nd.edu}
14     \affiliation{Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,\\
15     University of Notre Dame, \\
16     Notre Dame, Indiana 46556}
17    
18     \date{\today}
19    
20     \begin{abstract}
21    
22     \end{abstract}
23    
24     \pacs{}
25     \maketitle
26    
27     Our idea for developing a simple and reasonable lipid model to study
28     the ripple pahse of lipid bilayers is based on two facts: one is that
29     the most essential feature of lipid molecules is their amphiphilic
30     structure with polar head groups and non-polar tails. Another fact is
31     that dominant numbers of lipid molecules are very rigid in ripple
32     phase which allows the details of the lipid molecules neglectable. In
33     our model, lipid molecules are represented by rigid bodies made of one
34     head sphere with a point dipole sitting on it and one ellipsoid tail,
35     the direction of the dipole is fixed to be perpendicular to the
36     tail. The breadth and length of tail are $\sigma_0$, $3\sigma_0$. The
37     diameter of heads varies from $1.20\sigma_0$ to $1.41\sigma_0$. The
38     model of the solvent in our simulations is inspired by the idea of
39     ``DPD'' water. Every four water molecules are reprsented by one
40     sphere.
41    
42    
43     Spheres interact each other with Lennard-Jones potential, ellipsoids
44     interact each other with Gay-Berne potential, dipoles interact each
45     other with typical dipole potential, spheres interact ellipsoids with
46     LJ-GB potential. All potentials are truncated at $25$ \AA and shifted
47     at $22$ \AA.
48    
49    
50     To make the simulations less expensive and to observe long-time range
51     behavior of the lipid membranes, all simulaitons were started from two
52     sepetated monolayers in the vaccum with $x-y$ anisotropic pressure
53     coupling, length of $z$ axis of the simulations was fixed to prevent
54     the shrinkage of the simulation boxes due to the free volume outside
55     of the bilayer, and a constant surface tension was applied to enable
56     the fluctuation of the surface. Periodic boundaries were used. There
57     were $480-720$ lipid molecules in simulations according to different
58     size of the heads. All the simulations were stablized for $100$ ns at
59     $300$ K. The resulted structures were solvated in the water (about
60     $6$ DPD water/lipid molecule) as the initial configurations for another
61     $30$ ns relaxation. All simulations with water were carried out at
62     constant pressure ($P=1$bar) by $3$D anisotropic coupling, and
63     constant surface tension ($\gamma=0.015$). Time step was
64     $50$ fs. Simulations were performed by using OOPSE package.
65    
66    
67     Snap shots show that the membrane is more corrugated with increasing
68     the size of the head groups. The surface is nearly perfect flat when
69     $\sigma_h$ is $1.20\sigma_0$. At $1.28\sigma_0$, although the surface
70     is still flat, the bilayer starts to splay inward, the upper leaf of
71     the bilayer is connected to the lower leaf with a interdigitated line
72     defect. Two periodicities with $100$\AA width were observed in the
73     simulation. This structure is very similiar to OTHER PAPER. The same
74     structure was also observed when $\sigma_h=1.41\sigma_0$. However, the
75     surface of the membrane is corrugated, and the periodicity of the
76     connection between upper and lower leaf membrane is shorter. From the
77     undulation spectrum of the surface (the exact form is in OUR PREVIOUS
78     PAPER), the corrugation is non-thermal fluctuation, and we are
79     confident to identify it as the ripple phase. The width of one ripple
80     is about $71$ \AA, and amplitude is about $7$ \AA. When
81     $\sigma_h=1.35\sigma_0$, we observed another corrugated surface with
82     $79$ \AA width and $10$ \AA amplitude. This structure is different to
83     the previous rippled surface, there is no connection between upper and
84     lower leaf of the bilayer. Each leaf of the bilayer is broken to
85     several curved pieces, the broken position is mounted into the center
86     of opposite piece in another leaf. Unlike another corrugated surface
87     in which the upper leaf of the surface is always connected to the
88     lower leaf from one direction, this ripple of this surface is
89     isotropic. Therefore, we claim this is a symmetric ripple phase.
90    
91    
92     The $P_2$ order paramter is calculated to understand the phase
93     behavior quantatively. $P_2=1$ means a perfect ordered structure, and
94     $P_2=0$ means a random structure. The method can be found in OUR
95     PAPER. Fig. shows $P_2$ order paramter of the dipoles on head group
96     raises with increasing the size of the head group. When head of lipid
97     molecule is small, the membrane is flat and shows strong two
98     dimensional characters, dipoles are frustrated on orientational
99     ordering in this circumstance. Another reason is that the lipids can
100     move independently in each monolayer, it is not nessasory for the
101     direction of dipoles on one leaf is consistant to another layer, which
102     makes total order parameter is relatively low. With increasing the
103     size of head group, the surface is being more corrugated, dipoles are
104     not allowed to move freely on the surface, they are
105     localized. Therefore, the translational freedom of lipids in one layer
106     is dependent upon the position of lipids in another layer, as a
107     result, the symmetry of the dipoles on head group in one layer is
108     consistant to the symmetry in another layer. Furthermore, the membrane
109     tranlates from a two dimensional system to a three dimensional system
110     by the corrugation, the symmetry of the ordering for the two
111     dimensional dipoles on the head group of lipid molecules is broken, on
112     a distorted lattice, dipoles are ordered on a head to tail energy
113     state, the order parameter is increased dramaticly. However, the total
114     polarization of the system is close to zero, which is a strong
115     evidence it is a antiferroelectric state. The orientation of the
116     dipole ordering is alway perpendicular to the ripple vector. These
117     results are consistant to our previous study on similar system. The
118     ordering of the tails are opposite to the ordering of the dipoles on
119     head group, the $P_2$ order parameter decreases with increasing the
120     size of head. This indicates the surface is more curved with larger
121     head. When surface is flat, all tails are pointing to the same
122     direction, in this case, all tails are parallal to the normal of the
123     surface, which shares the same structure with $L_{\beta}$ phase. For the
124     size of head being $1.28\sigma_0$, the surface starts to splay inward,
125     however, the surface is still flat, therefore, although the order
126     parameter is lower, it still indicates a very flat surface. Further
127     increasing the size of the head, the order parameter drops dramaticly,
128     the surface is rippled.
129    
130    
131     We studied the effects of interaction between head groups on the
132     structure of lipid bilayer by changing the strength of the dipole. The
133     fig. shows the $P_2$ order parameter changing with strength of the
134     dipole. Generally the dipoles on the head group are more ordered with
135     increasing the interaction between heads and more disordered with
136     decreasing the interaction between heads. When the interaction between
137     heads is weak enough, the bilayer structure is not persisted any more,
138     all lipid molecules are melted in the water. The critial value of the
139     strength of the dipole is various for different system. The perfect
140     flat surface melts at $5$ debye, the asymmetric rippled surfaces melt
141     at $8$ debye, the symmetric rippled surfaces melt at $10$ debye. This
142     indicates that the flat phase is the most stable state, the asymmetric
143     ripple phase is second stalbe state, and the symmetric ripple phase is
144     the most unstable state. The ordering of the tails is the same as the
145     ordering of the dipoles except for the flat phase. Since the surface
146     is already perfect flat, the order parameter does not change much
147     until the strength of the dipole is $15$ debye. However, the order
148     parameter decreases quickly when the strength of the dipole is further
149     increased. The head group of the lipid molecules are brought closer by
150     strenger interaction between them. For a flat surface, a mount of free
151     volume between head groups is available, when the head groups are
152     brought closer, the surface will splay outward to be a inverse
153     micelle. For rippled surfaces, there is few free volume available on
154     between the head groups, they can be closer, therefore there are
155     little effect on the structure of the membrane. Another interesting
156     fact, unlike other systems melting directly when the interaction is
157     weak enough, for $\sigma_h$ is $1.41\sigma_0$, part of the membrane
158     melts into itself first, the upper leaf of the bilayer is totally
159     interdigitated with the lower leaf, this is different with the
160     interdigitated lines in rippled phase where only one interdigitated
161     line connects the two leaves of bilayer.
162    
163    
164     Fig. shows the changing of the order parameter with temperature. The
165     behavior of the $P_2$ orderparamter is straightforword. Systems are
166     more ordered at low temperature, and more disordered at high
167     temperature. When the temperature is high enough, the membranes are
168     discontinuted. The structures are stable during the changing of the
169     temperature. Since our model lacks the detail information for tails of
170     lipid molecules, we did not simulate the fluid phase with a melted
171     fatty chains. Moreover, the formation of the tilted $L_{\beta'}$ phase
172     also depends on the organization of fatty groups on tails, we did not
173     observe it either.
174    
175     \bibliography{mdripple}
176     \end{document}