Strong hydrophobic interaction between graphene oxide and supported lipid bilayers revealed by AFM

Understanding the interaction between graphene oxide (GO) and lipid membranes is of great importance for its various applications in biotechnology. Here, we investigated the interaction between GO and charged supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) by in situ atomic force microscope (AFM) imaging. It was found that GO could peel off a single layer of positively charged SLBs and deposited on the hydrophobic part of the remaining sublayer. Then free lipid molecules would assemble on GO surface and formed 1.5 bilayers in a lipid-GO-lipid manner. For negatively charged lipid bilayers, however, GO deposited to the SLBs only when its concentration was very high. These results indicate that, in addition to electrostatic interaction, the hydrophobic interaction plays an important role when GO sheets deposit onto the charged lipid bilayers, and should be helpful to understand possible cytotoxicity and antibiosis of graphene-related nanomaterials. Microsc. Res. Tech. 79:721-726, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.