Flower-shaped 2D crystals grown in curved fluid vesicle membranes.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38658581.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-47844-x and PMC identifier 11043355.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The morphologies of two-dimensional (2D) crystals, nucleated, grown, and integrated within 2D elastic fluids, for instance in giant vesicle membranes, are dictated by an interplay of mechanics, permeability, and thermal contraction. Mitigation of solid strain drives the formation of crystals with vanishing Gaussian curvature (i.e., developable domain shapes) and, correspondingly, enhanced Gaussian curvature in the surrounding 2D fluid. However, upon cooling to grow the crystals, large vesicles sustain greater inflation and tension because their small area-to-volume ratio slows water permeation. As a result, more elaborate shapes, for instance, flowers with bendable but inextensible petals, form on large vesicles despite their more gradual curvature, while small vesicles harbor compact planar crystals. This size dependence runs counter to the known cumulative growth of strain energy of 2D colloidal crystals on rigid spherical templates. This interplay of intra-membrane mechanics and processing points to the scalable production of flexible molecular crystals of controllable complex shape.