Figure 14.

Self-assembly of lipids into a bilayer starting from a random dispersion at a temperature T = 310 K captured from a parallel tempering simulation. From top left to bottom right the snapshots taken at times t/τ = 0, 600, 800, 950, 1000, 16 000, 21 000, 38 000, 50 000, 64 000, respectively. Initially, the lipids aggregate quickly into a locally lamellar structure, presumably corresponding to a local minimum in the free energy (see the top five snapshots from t = 0 to t = 1000τ). After this, it takes a very substantial time to eliminate kinetically trapped large-scale defects and arrive at the global minimum in free energy, which corresponds to a defect-free fluid bilayer (see the bottom snapshots from t = 16 000τ to t = 64 000τ).