title: Conformation of a charged vesicle.
abstract: We report on the first systematic study of vesicle conformational change caused by Coulomb interaction between surface charges on a lipid vesicle. The equilibrium configuration of a charged vesicle is found, as the result of the competition between the local bending elastic energy and the long-range electrostatic interaction within the membrane where the counter-ion effects are neglected. Because of the Rayleigh instability, a charged vesicle undergoes conformational transitions as a function of the surface charge density.
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. lijf@fudan.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jianfeng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Hongdong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.forename: Yuliang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Jeff Z Y
authors.initials: JZ
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D008081:Liposomes / Q000737:chemistry*; D055672:Static Electricity
chemical_list: D008081:Liposomes