Eur. Phys. J. E (2003) 12: 283-290
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2003-10063-1

Solid-supported lipid multilayers: Structure factor and fluctuations

Institut für Röntgenphysik, Geiststraße 11, 37073 , Göttingen, Germany

^* e-mail: dconsta@gwdg.de
^** e-mail: ulrike.mennicke@gmx.net
^*** e-mail: cli@uni-goettingen.de
^**** e-mail: tsaldit@gwdg.de

Abstract

We present a theoretical description of the thermal fluctuations in a solid-supported stack of lipid bilayers, for the case of vanishing surface tension and in the framework of continuous smectic elasticity. The model is successfully used to model the reflectivity profile of a thin (16 bilayers) DMPC sample under applied osmotic pressure and the diffuse scattering from a thick (800 bilayers) stack. We compare our model to previously existing theories.