Figure 11.

Nanotube patterns within Ld-phase vesicles as observed for the VM-B and VM-C morphologies corresponding to complete and partial wetting of the membranes. (a) Disordered pattern corresponding to a confocal xy-scan of the VM-B morphology. Because the Ld membrane is completely wetted by the PEG-rich phase, the nanotubes explore the whole PEG-rich droplet but stay away from the dextran-rich phase located below the imaging plane. (b) A layer of densely packed tubes as visible in an xy-scan of the VM-C morphology. As a result of partial wetting, the nanotubes now adhere to the pd interface between the two aqueous droplets and form a thin layer in which crowding leads to short-range orientational order of the tubes. Note that the tube layer is only partially visible because the pd interface is curved into a spherical cap. Both in (a,b), the diameter of the tubes is below the diffraction limit, but the tubes are theoretically predicted to have necklace-like and cylindrical shapes in panels (a,b), respectively. Reprinted with permission from Liu et al. (2016). Copyright (2016) American Chemical Society.