Plasma-treated poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS)-supported lipid bilayers are used as functional tools for studying cell membrane properties and as platforms for biotechnology applications. Self-spreading is a versatile method for forming lipid bilayers. However, few studies have focused on the effect of plasma treatment on self-spreading lipid bilayer formation. In this paper, we performed lipid bilayer self-spreading on a PDMS surface with different treatment times. Surface characterization of PDMS treated with different treatment times is evaluated by AFM and SEM, and the effects of plasma treatment of the PDMS surface on lipid bilayer self-spreading behavior is investigated by confocal microscopy. The front-edge velocity of lipid bilayers increases with the plasma treatment time. By theoretical analyses with the extended-DLVO modeling, we find that the most likely cause of the velocity change is the hydration repulsion energy between the PDMS surface and lipid bilayers. Moreover, the growth behavior of membrane lobes on the underlying self-spreading lipid bilayer was affected by topography changes in the PDMS surface resulting from plasma treatment. Our findings suggest that the growth of self-spreading lipid bilayers can be controlled by changing the plasma treatment time.

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Black lipid membrane suspending on a solid-state nanopore (nano-black lipid membranes; nano-BLMs) is a functional application to detect single-channel activities with a long lifetime. However, folding and painting techniques, which are traditionally used to form nano-BLMs, only have a low success rate because of their complicated procedure. Herein, we report on the self-spreading method on 50 nm pore size polycarbonate membrane filter to form nano-BLMs by a simple procedure. Our results show that the nano-BLMs have been successfully formed on the membrane filter. The spreading velocity of the nano-BLMs exhibits a square root behavior, v ∼ t −1/2 , which is in great agreement with the previous research. The experiments with fluorescence recovery after photobleaching show the recovery of a photobleached area in our nano-BLMs. We also measure the elastic response of our nano-BLMs by using an atomic force microscope, and our results demonstrate that the lipid bilayer is spanning on the pore of membrane filter. We also discuss the effect of temperature and the roughness of supporting surface on the spreading speed of lipid bilayer. K E Y W O R D Satomic force microscope, lipid bilayer, membrane filter, membrane protein, self-spreading method BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVESElectron Comm Jpn. 2019;102:47-54.

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