Observation of size-dependent melting in lipid nanoparticles

The differential scanning calorimetry thermograms of suspensions of trimyri stin nanoparticles in the stable P-polymorph display several melting events . Particle thickness distributions obtained by analysis of difference X-ray diffraction patterns recorded during melting reveal that these discrete ev ents correspond to the melting of classes of particles differing in thickne ss by only one unit cell. A large increase in lattice constants with decrea sing particle thickness was observed, indicating that classical surface the rmodynamics is not applicable to particles consisting of only a few molecul ar layers.