Spectroscopic Ellipsometry of fluid and gel phase lipid bilayers in hydrated conditions

The biological membranes play a crucial role in the various biological processes due to their characteristic physical properties. The parameters such as membrane composition, thickness undulations, and the influence of external stimuli play a crucial role in the phase state behavior of biological membranes. The supported lipid bilayer (SLBs) systems closely represent cell membranes and are often studied to understand their behavior. In the current study, we have implemented spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE) technique to explore the optical properties of various single component lipid bilayers having different phase state (fluid and gel) under hydrated or native conditions. The measurement of ellipsometric angles ψ and Δ were obtained from SE and were utilized to realize an explicit phase state dependence. Further, we obtained the thickness (t) and refractive index (n) by modeling of these SE results. These results were found to be inter-related to the phase state and lateral organization. The bilayer thickness is further verified against values obtained from coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. The proposed method was tested on various lipid bilayers under their native phase state at room temperature and was found to have a correlation with AFM measurements.