Morphology change in nematic membranes induced by defects

The cell membrane is one of the most important structures of living organisms. This is due to the many functions attributed to it such as permeable selectivity, protection, anchoring to the cytoskeleton and so many others. Any change in the shape of the cell membrane may affect directly the properti...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Taniguchi, Maiara Mitiko, Zola, Fernanda Cavicchioli, Guimarães, Veridiana Garcia, Gonçalves, Giane, Rossato, Roberto, Zola, Rafael Soares
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:Brasil
Institución:Universidade Estadual de Maringá (UEM)
Repositorio:Acta scientiarum. Technology (Online)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:periodicos.uem.br/ojs:article/24419
Acceso en línea:http://www.periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/ActaSciTechnol/article/view/24419
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:1 defects
nematic liquid crystals
bending rigidity
buckle
Descripción
Sumario:The cell membrane is one of the most important structures of living organisms. This is due to the many functions attributed to it such as permeable selectivity, protection, anchoring to the cytoskeleton and so many others. Any change in the shape of the cell membrane may affect directly the properties and abilities. In this article, we study how defects in the liquid crystalline organization of a membrane can change its shape.  For performing this, we consider a membrane with orientational order, i.e., a nematic membrane, which can happen in biological membranes, nematic films and other systems and study how a defect in this order can change the shape of the membrane when the bending rigidity is considered. We find that depending on the ratio of rigidity and elastic constant, buckling of this membrane may happens and turn it into pseudo-spheres.