Arrangement of Spherical Nanoparticles on Nanoscale Liposomes

The understanding of the interaction between nanoparticles (NPs) and lipid membranes is important to the development of safe and effective nanomaterials for many applications. The adhesion of a spherical NP on a lipid membrane leads to its wrapping by the membrane, and deformations of the membrane leading to effective attractive interactions between the NPs and their self-assembly on the membrane¹. Here, we present results based on coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of an implicit solvent model in conjunction with the Weighted Histogram Analysis Method, of the arrangement of two NPs on liposomes. The finite size of the liposome leads to preferred configurations of the NPs that depend on the adhesion strength and the ratio between the liposome's diameter and that of the NP. We show that depending on these parameters, the NPs prefer to be apart at specific locations on the liposome, dimerize into in-plane or out-of-plane dimers, or are endocytosed. Our results agree, to some extent, with those of Bahrami et al.², which are based on a Monte Carlo minimization of the system's energy.
[1] E.J. Spangler et al., Soft Matter 14, 5019 (2018)
[2] A.H. Bahrami et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 188102 (2012)