Location of sugars in multilamellar membranes at low hydration

Severe dehydration is lethal for most biological species. However, there are a number of organisms which have evolved mechanisms to avoid damage during dehydration. One of these mechanisms is the accumulation of small solutes (e.g. sugars), which have been shown to preserve membranes by inhibiting deleterious phase changes at low hydration. Specifically, sugars reduce the gel to fluid phase transition temperatures of model lipid/water mixtures. However, there is a debate about the precise mechanism, the resolution of which hinges on the location of the sugars. In excess water, it has been observed using contrast variation SANS that the sugar concentration in the excess phase is higher than in the interlamellar region [Deme and Zemb, J. Appl. Crystallog. 33 (2000) 569]. This raises two questions regarding the location of the sugars at low hydrations: first, does the system phase separate to give a sugar/water phase in equilibrium with a lipid/water/sugar lamellar region (with different sugar concentrations); and second, is the sugar in the interlamellar region uniformly distributed, or does it concentrate preferentially either in close proximity to the lipids, or towards the center of the interbilayer region. In this paper we present the preliminary results of measurements using contrast variation SANS to determine the location of sugars in lipid/water mixtures

Long-range crystalline nature of the skyrmion lattice in MnSi

We report small angle neutron scattering of the skyrmion lattice in MnSi using an experimental set-up that minimizes the effects of demagnetizing fields and double scattering. Under these conditions the skyrmion lattice displays resolution-limited Gaussian rocking scans that correspond to a magnetic correlation length in excess of several hundred {\mu}m. This is consistent with exceptionally well-defined long-range order. We further establish the existence of higher-order scattering, discriminating parasitic double-scattering with Renninger scans. The field and temperature dependence of the higher-order scattering arises from an interference effect. It is characteristic for the long-range crystalline nature of the skyrmion lattice as shown by simple mean field calculations.Comment: 4 page

Mesoscopic structural organization in fluorinated pyrrolidinium based room temperature ionic liquids

In this contribution the microscopic and mesoscopic structural organization in a series of fluorinated room temperature ionic liquids, based on N-methyl-N-alkylpyrrolidinium cations and on bis(perfluoroalkylsulfonyl)imide anions, is investigated, using a synergy of experimental (X-ray and neutron scattering) and computational (Molecular Dynamics) techniques. The proposed ionic liquids are of high interest as electrolyte media for lithium battery applications. Together with information on their good ion transport properties in conjunction with low viscosity, we also describe the existence of nm-scale spatial organization induced by the segregation of fluorous moieties into domains. This study shows the strong complementarity between X-ray/neutron scattering in detecting the complex segregated morphology in these systems at mesoscopic spatial scales and MD simulations in successfully delivering a robust description of the segregated morphology at atomistic level

Morphology of the Superconducting Vortex Lattice in Ultra-Pure Niobium

The morphology of the superconducting flux line lattice (FLL) of Nb comprises gradual variations with various lock-in transitions and symmetry breaking rotations. We report a comprehensive small-angle neutron scattering study of the FLL in an ultra-pure single crystal of Nb as a function of the orientation of the applied magnetic field. We attribute the general morphology of the FLL and its orientation to three dominant mechanisms. First, non-local contributions, second, the transition between open and closed Fermi surface sheets and, third, the intermediate mixed state between the Meissner and the Shubnikov phase.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let