Structure and Volta Potential of Lipid Multilayers: Effect of X-ray Irradiation

The effect of hard X-ray radiation on the structure and electrostatics of solid-supported lipid multilayer membranes is investigated using a scanning Kelvin probe (SKP) integrated with a high-energy synchrotron beamline to enable in situ measurements of the membranes' local Volta g potential (V-p) during X-ray structural characterization. The :a undulator radiation employed does not induce any detectable structural damage, but the V-p of both bare and lipid-modified substrates is found to undergo strong radiation-induced shifts, almost immediately after X-ray exposure. Sample regions that are macroscopically distant (similar to cm) from the irradiated region experience an exponential V-p growth with a characteristic time constant of several minutes. The V-p variations occurring upon periodic on/off X-ray beam switching are fully or partially reversible depending on the location and time-scale of the SKP measurement. The general relevance of these findings for synchrotron-based characterization of biomolecular thin films is critically reviewed.