Can a Carbon Nanotube Pierce through a Phospholipid Bilayer?

Details Can a Carbon Nanotube Pierce through a Phospholipid Bilayer? Can a Carbon Nanotube Pierce through a Phospholipid Bilayer?

2010-10-07

arxiv.org/abs/1010.1462v1

ACS Nano, 2010, 4 (9), pp 5293-5300

Physics

Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter

Published in ACS Nano

Scientific paper

10.1021/nn1016549

Great efficiency to penetrate into living cells is attributed to carbon nanotubes due to a number of direct and indirect observations of carbon nanotubes inside the cells. However, a direct evidence of physical translocation of nanotubes through phospholipid bilayers and the exact microscopic mechanism of their penetration into cells are still lacking. In order to test one of the inferred translocation mechanisms, namely the spontaneous piercing through the membrane induced only by thermal motion, we calculate the energy cost associated with the insertion of a carbon nanotube into a model phospholipid bilayer using the Single Chain Mean Field theory which is particularly suitable for the accurate measurements of equilibrium free energies. We find that the energy cost of the bilayer rupture is quite high compared to the energy of thermal motion. This conclusion may indirectly support other energy dependent translocation mechanisms such as, for example, endocytosis.

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