The unbinding transition of mixed fluid membranes

PACS. 87.16.Dg – Membranes, bilayers, and vesicles. PACS. 68.05.-n – Liquid-liquid interfaces. PACS. 64.60.-i – General studies of phase transitions. Abstract. – A phenomenological model for the unbinding transition of multicomponent fluid membranes is proposed, where the unbinding transition is described using a theory analogous to the Flory-Huggins theory for polymers. The coupling between the lateral phase separation of inclusion molecules and the membrane-substrate potential provides a rich phase behavior. Our model describes the first-order nature of the unbinding transition in multicomponent mem-branes as was observed in a recent experiment. In particular, we predict different scenarios of phase coexistence between bound and unbound membrane states. Introduction. – Adhesion of membranes and vesicles is responsible for cell-cell adhesion which plays an important role in all multicellular organisms. In general, bio-adhesion is governed by the interplay of various generic and specific interactions [1]. Specific interactions act between complementary pairs of proteins such as ligand and receptor, or antibody and antigen. Well-studied examples of such coupled systems are biotin-avidin complexes [2], o