X-ray reflectivity of Lipid Bilayers at Liquid/Liquid interfaces

Biological membranes are vital components of all living organisms. They form the boundaries between the various compartments of cells and constitute platforms for essential biochemical processes. Structural insight is usually a prerequisite to understand the details of these processes. Here we study lipid membranes immobilized the near functionalized liquid/liquid (L/L) interfaces (fluorinated oil (perfluorooctane C8F18) and water). This offers unique possibilities for structural studies on molecular transport processes through lipid membranes. High energy X-ray reflectivity offers the chance to have higher reciprocal and real space resolution. Moreover, the electron density difference between fluorinated oil, water, lipid headgroups and tails gives us the opportunity to obtain detailed information about the structure of lipids at the L/L interface. Structure og lipid bilayers deposited onto functionalized oil/water interfaces via vesicle fusion at different charge density and chemistry of the pre-formed monolayer is studied with XRR.