Vesicle adhesion and rupture on silicon oxide: influence of freeze-thaw pretreatment

We have investigated the effect of freeze-thaw (FT) pretreatment on the adhesion and rupture of extruded vesicles over a wide range of vesicle sizes. To characterize the size distributions of vesicles obtained with and without FT pretreatment, dynamic light scattering (DLS) experiments were performed. The interaction between extruded vesicles and a silicon oxide substrate was investigated by quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D) monitoring, with a focus on comparative analysis of similar-sized vesicles with and without FT pretreatment. Under this condition, there was a smaller mass load at the critical coverage associated with untreated vesicles, as compared to vesicles which had been subjected to FT pretreatment. In addition, the rupture of treated vesicles generally resulted in formation of a complete planar bilayer, while the adlayer was more heterogeneous when employing untreated vesicles. Combined with kinetic analysis and extended-DLVO model calculations, the experimental evidence suggests that the differences arising from FT pretreatment are due to characteristics of the vesicle size distribution and also multilamellarity of an appreciable fraction of untreated vesicles. Taken together, our findings clarify the influence of FT pretreatment on model membrane fabrication on solid supports.