Director rotation of liquid crystalline domains embedded in a pseudo- biomembrane

Abstract

As a model of biomembranes, we made a phospholipid-cholesterol Langmuir film in which cholesteric LC domains with several ~ several-tens of micrometer diameter were dispersed. When an ethanol vapor was transmitted through the film, due to the cross correlation between transmembrane mass transport and the director field, the embedded cholesteric domains exhibited a unidirectional director rotation, the speed of which linearly depended on the chirality strength. The obtained system offers a good prototype of pseudo-biomembranes.