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Modulating Shape of Polyester Based Polymersomes using Osmotic Pressure
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Electrostatics-driven shape transitions in soft shells.

Vikram Jadhao1, Creighton K Thomas1, Monica Olvera de la Cruz2

  • 1Departments of Materials Science and Engineering.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|August 20, 2014
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Electrostatics can control the shape of soft, charged membranes. By adjusting salt concentration or surface charge, researchers can induce transformations from spheres to ellipsoids, discs, and bowls for advanced materials.

Keywords:
elasticitylong-range interactionsmorphologynanotechnology

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Area of Science:

  • * Soft matter physics
  • * Nanotechnology
  • * Materials science

Background:

  • * Controllable manipulation of nanoscale object shape is crucial for self-assembly and targeted drug delivery.
  • * Designing biomimetic membranes often involves inducing shape deformations via external parameters.

Purpose of the Study:

  • * To demonstrate the use of electrostatics for manipulating the shape of soft, closed membranes.
  • * To investigate how environmental conditions, specifically electrolyte concentration, influence membrane shape.

Main Methods:

  • * Employed a molecular dynamics-based simulated annealing procedure.
  • * Investigated charged elastic shells that maintain a constant volume (no material exchange).

Main Results:

  • * Decreasing salt concentration or increasing shell surface charge breaks spherical symmetry, forming ellipsoids, discs, and bowls.
  • * Shape changes are driven by reduced electrostatic energy and increased shell surface area.
  • * Analytical calculations confirm that a charged disc has lower Coulomb energy than a sphere of equal volume.

Conclusions:

  • * Electrostatic interactions provide a viable mechanism for controlling the shape of charged elastic membranes.
  • * Shape transitions are feasible across a broad range of shell volume fractions, even with charge renormalization effects considered.