Figure 1.

(A) Schematic diagram of a typical tBLM used in these experiments. (B) The equivalent circuit for the tBLM used here. For the electrode area of 2.1 mm², the actual values have been rounded to 1500 nF, 150 nF, and 15 nF to emphasize the 10-fold differences between the capacitances at each layer of the equivalent circuit. (C) Of the 500 mV step applied across the whole circuit, ∼1%, or 0.004504 V, is initially expressed across the gold counterelectrode, C_c, ∼10%, or 0.04504 V, across the tethering gold surface, C_th, and ∼90%, or 0.4504 V, across the tethered membrane, C_m. The current response (bottom plot) initially shows a capacitive spike due to charging of C_m, C_th, and C_c. After this initial spike, the current slowly decays due to the charge being redistributed across C_th and C_c. When C_th and C_c are fully charged, the voltage across the membrane and the current will have decayed to zero. To see this figure in color, go online.