Eur. Phys. J. E (2007) 23: 367-374
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2006-10198-5

Regular Article

Domain-induced budding in buckling membranes

Department of physics, Kyoto University, 606-8502, Kyoto, Japan

^* e-mail: minami_a@scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Received: 12 December 2006
Accepted: 25 June 2007
Published online: 22 August 2007

Abstract

We present a phase field model on buckling membranes to analyze phase separation and budding on soft membranes. By numerically integrating dynamic equations, it turns out that the formation of caps is greatly influenced by the presence of a little excess area due to the surface area constraint. When cap-shaped domains are created, domain coalescence is mainly observed not between domains with same budding directions, but between domains with opposite budding directions, because the bending energy between two domains is larger in the former case. Although we do not introduce spontaneous curvature like Helfrich model, we obtain some suggestions related to the slow dynamics of the phase separation on vesicles.