|
In the last few years there have been a number of research papers on self-assemblies of molecules as 'advanced materials' or 'smart sensors'. The inspiration for this exciting research, without question, comes from the biological world, where, for example, the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane is the most important self-assembling system. Although the first report on self-assembled bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs) in vitro was published in 1962, interface science including surface and colloid science has been dealing with these interfacial self-assemblies of amphophilic molecules since Robert Hooke's time. In this communication, we present results of extensive study of physical chemical properties of two new membrane systems: metal and hydrogel supported bilayer lipid membranes. Several methods have been sued to investigate the properties of these metal supported s-BLMs and hydrogel supported salt- bridge sb-BLMs. With the electrostriction method we observed different behavior of the planar lipid bilayer on metal substrate. The obtained results gave possibility to choose optical properties of the support for constructing s-BLM- based biosensors. The capacitance relaxation method was used to determine the changes of dielectric relaxation times and showed different dynamic proprieties of lipids on the metal substrate and in free standing BLMs. Analysis of membrane current noise allowed the examination of the dynamic properties of supported BLMs. Examples of a number of practical applications of s-BLMs for the construction of a glucose sensor for biomedical use as well as applications of agar supported BLMs for determining several toxins will be presented.
|
