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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Feb 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biomaterials. 2011 Nov 14;33(5):1201–1237. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2011.10.059

Figure 6.

Figure 6

Sequence of events leading to the adsorption of human serum albumin (HSA, gray spheres) to a liquid-air surface that interprets neutron reflectometry (NR) data (Section 4.8.2). Panel A is derived from Fig. 4 by removing all other proteins from the hypothetical 50X50X50 nm cube of blood plasma. Panel B represents the instant of creating an air interface on top of Panel A but before any movement of HSA occurs. Panel C releases the stop-motion constraint allowing HSA molecules to diffuse into an inflating interphase, ultimately achieving the interphase concentration detected by NR. Calculations suggest that a packed hexagonal array of molecules is required to achieve NR concentration, as depicted in Panel C.