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Science 16 July 1999:
Vol. 285. no. 5426, pp. 394 - 397
DOI: 10.1126/science.285.5426.394
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Reports

Electrostatic Repulsion of Positively Charged Vesicles and Negatively Charged Objects

Helim Aranda-Espinoza, 1* Yi Chen, 2 Nily Dan, 1* T. C. Lubensky, 2 Philip Nelson, 2dagger Laurence Ramos, 3 D. A. Weitz 2ddagger

A positively charged, mixed bilayer vesicle in the presence of negatively charged surfaces (for example, colloidal particles) can spontaneously partition into an adhesion zone of definite area and another zone that repels additional negative objects. Although the membrane itself has nonnegative charge in the repulsive zone, negative counterions on the interior of the vesicle spontaneously aggregate there and present a net negative charge to the exterior. Beyond the fundamental result that oppositely charged objects can repel, this mechanism helps to explain recent experiments on surfactant vesicles.

1 Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA.
3 Groupe de Dynamique des Phases Condensées, Case 26, Université de Montpellier II, Place E. Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 05, France.
*   Address after 1 September 1999: Department of Chemical Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

dagger    To whom correspondence should be addressed.

ddagger    Address after 1 September 1999: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

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