Self-assembly of lipids and nanoparticles in aqueous solution: Self-consistent field simulations

Self-assembled nanostructures of lipids and nanoparticles hold great promise for applications in such fields as nanomedicine. This paper uses the self-consistent field theory to investigate the self-assembly behavior of lipid molecules and nanoparticles with different shapes in an aqueous solution. It is found that the lipid molecules can form monolayered and bilayered nanostructures around the nanoparticles with different shapes (e.g., triangular, square, hexagonal and octangular). With decreasing the size of nanoparticles or increasing the number of polygon edges, the shape of lipid layers will approach an approximately spherical shape. These findings may help to predict and design novel drug delivery nanocarriers. (C) 2012 The Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.