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Why the wrinkling transition in partially polymerized membranes is not universal? Fractal-multifractal hierarchy
Sahraoui Chaieb1, Sárka Málková, Jyotsana Lal
1Mechanical Science and Engineering Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. sch@uiuc.edu
Abstract:
When partially polymerized membranes wrinkle they exhibit a passage from a conventional buckling (due to an instability caused by chiral symmetry breaking) at low polymerization to a local roughening (due to a frustration in the local packing of the chiral molecules composing the membrane) as a function of the polymerization of the lipids aliphatic tails. This transition was found to be non-universal and here we used neutron scattering to elucidate that this behavior is due to the onset of stretching in the membrane accompanied by a bilayer thickness variation. Close to the percolation limit this deformation is plastic similar to mutated lysozymes. We draw an analogy between this transition and echinocytes in red blood cells.
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