Conformational switching of chiral colloidal rafts regulates raft-raft attractions and repulsions.

ABSTRACT: Membrane-mediated particle interactions depend both on the properties of the particles themselves and the membrane environment in which they are suspended. Experiments have shown that chiral rod-like inclusions dissolved in a colloidal membrane of opposite handedness assemble into colloidal rafts, which are finite-sized reconfigurable droplets consisting of a large but precisely defined number of rods. We systematically tune the chirality of the background membrane and find that, in the achiral limit, colloidal rafts acquire complex structural properties and interactions. In particular, rafts can switch between 2 chiral states of opposite handedness, which alters the nature of the membrane-mediated raft-raft interactions. Rafts with the same chirality have long-ranged repulsions, while tho

SUBMITTER: Miller JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6689927 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature