Interaction of silver nanoparticles with tethered bilayer lipid membranes

Silver nanoparticles are well-known for their antibacterial properties. However, the detailed mechanism describing the interaction between the nanoparticles and a cell membrane is not fully understood; Which can impede the use of the particles in biomedical applications. Here, a tethered bilayer lipid membrane has been used as a model system: to mimic a natural membrane and to. study the effect of exposure to small silver nanoparticles with diameters of about 2 nm. The solid: supported membrane architecture allowed for the: application of surface analytical techniques such as electrochemical impedance Spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. Exposure of the membrane to solutions of the silver nanoparticles led to a small but completely reversible perturbation of the lipid bilayer