Structure/Friction relationships in Solid-Supported Lipid Layers – Banana_Slip

In many biological phenomena such as biolubrication, stacks of lipid membranes play a major role for reducing friction. The understanding of the microscopic mechanisms involved remains very phenomenological, mainly due to large structural complexity of these systems, and the difficulty of describing the hydrodynamics of confined fluids, where the hydrodynamic boundary condition is a crucial issue. We propose to study these phenomena by combining experiments and molecular dynamics simulations. Experimental originality is based on the use of highly controlled systems and on recent instrumental development allowing to study both the tribology and velocity profile of confined systems. Such model systems as well as the measurement of microscopic quantities will allow a confrontation with the simulations, to lead to thorough description of the mechanisms involved at the molecular level.