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Updated: May 21, 2026

Fluorescence Recovery after Merging a Droplet to Measure the Two-dimensional Diffusion of a Phospholipid Monolayer
Published on: October 15, 2015
Emergence of a thread-like pattern with charged phospholipids on an oil/water interface
Hiroaki Ito1, Miho Yanagisawa, Masatoshi Ichikawa
1Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, 606-8501 Kyoto, Japan.
Abstract:
The spontaneous formation of a thread-like pattern with negatively charged lipids on an oil/water interface is reported. An analysis of the time-dependent change at the interface observed by fluorescence microscopy revealed that the thread-like pattern is generated through a two-step mechanism. First, inverted lipid micelles in the bulk-oil phase gradually diffuse onto the oil/water interface. Next, the micelles are adsorbed on the interface and self-assemble to form the thread-like pattern. The essential characteristics of this pattern formation are theoretically reproduced by a simple Monte Carlo simulation that takes into account the kinetics in the coalescence of charged micelles on a 2D interface.
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