Formation and fluidity measurement of supported lipid bilayer on polyvinyl chloride membrane

We prepared an artificial lipid bilayer on a plasticized poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) membrane on a Si3N4 layer deposited on a Si wafer. We optimized the experimental condition for the fabrication of the PVC membrane, and obtained a PVC membrane with a flat and uniform surface on the scale of several hundreds of micrometer suitable for a substrate for supported lipid bilayers (SLBs). The SLB of 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) was formed on the PVC membrane by the vesicle fusion method. The observation with a conventional epi-fluorescence microscope and a confocal laser scanning microscope gave geometrically uniform images of the SLB on the PVC membrane. The fluidity and the mobile fraction of the SLB was evaluated by the fluorescence recovery after photobleaching method, and compared with that on a thermally oxidized $SiO2/Si$ substrate. The SLB on the PVC membrane contained immobile fraction ∼30%, but the diffusion in the mobile fraction was two times faster than that in the SLB on $SiO2/Si$⁠, which had little immobile fraction.