Multilamellar vesicles
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Multilamellar vesicles or MLVs or also called onions are vesicles made of more than one lamellar sheet. A lamellar phase (Lα) refers generally to essentially flat and infinite bilayers of amphiphilic molecules alternating by a bulk polar liquid (solvent, such as water). They are essentially sheets of polar-headed long-chain nonpolar-tail molecules separated by a bulk liquid, which are stacked with onedimensional order with a thickness of the solvent layer on the order of nanometers. Often these layered structures are found to be in bidimensional order, i.e. in a vesicle form sometimes referred to as liposomes, but more properly called uni- (one lamellar sheet) or multi- (more than one lamellar sheet) lamellar vesicles.[1]
The transition from planar lamellae to multilamellar vesicles can require a few kBT of energy. For short non-ionic amphiphilic molecules, the energy needed is around 3 and 8 kBT.[2] This implies that the lamellar(Lα)-to-MLVs transition is often observed when a gentle flow field is applied.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Gentile L, Behrens MA, Porcar L, Butler P, Wagner NJ, Olsson U (July 2014). "Multilamellar vesicle formation from a planar lamellar phase under shear flow". Langmuir. 30 (28): 8316–25. doi:10.1021/la501071s. PMID 24983325.
- ↑ Gentile L, Silva BF, Balog S, Mortensen K, Olsson U (April 2012). "Structural transitions induced by shear flow and temperature variation in a nonionic surfactant/water system". Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. 372 (1): 32–9. doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2012.01.027. PMID 22321990.
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