Nanopore lipid bilayer formed by self-spreading method

Abstract

Black lipid membrane suspending on a solid-state nanopore (nano-black lipid membranes; nano-BLMs) is a functional application to detect single-channel activities with a long lifetime. However, folding and painting techniques, which are traditionally used to form nano-BLMs, only have a low success rate because of their complicated procedure. Herein, we report on the self-spreading method on 50 nm pore size polycarbonate membrane filter to form nano-BLMs by a simple procedure. Our results show that the nano-BLMs have been successfully formed on the membrane filter. The spreading velocity of the nano-BLMs exhibits a square root behavior, v ∼ t−1/2, which is in great agreement with the previous research. The experiments with fluorescence recovery after photobleaching show the recovery of a photobleached area in our nano-BLMs. We also measure the elastic response of our nano-BLMs by using an atomic force microscope, and our results demonstrate that the lipid bilayer is spanning on the pore of membrane filter. We also discuss the effect of temperature and the roughness of supporting surface on the spreading speed of lipid bilayer.