Fluctuations and Phase Behavior of Fluid Membrane Vesicles
- 10 June 1994
- journal article
- Published by IOP Publishing in Europhysics Letters
- Vol. 26 (8) , 565-570
- https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/26/8/002
Abstract
We consider the behavior of a dilute phase of bilayer surfactant vesicles. We show that the free energy of a single vesicle increases logarithmically with vesicle size, due to a previously unappreciated finite-size contribution to the fluctuation free energy, in contrast to previous studies, which assumed a logarithmic decrease of the free energy due to thermal softening of the bending rigidity. This result leads to qualitatively different predictions for the behavior of an equilibrium vesicle phase.Keywords
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