Electrodynamics of liposome dispersions

This work presents a theoretical and experimental study of the electrodynam ic properties of liposome dispersions. The experiments focus on measuring t he electrophoretic mobility and the low-frequency dielectric spectra of uni lamellar dioleoylphosphatidylglycerol vesicles suspended in 1-1 and 2-1 ele ctrolytes. The theoretical part presents a relatively simple model for the dynamics of the electric double layer surrounding the liposome. It includes an analytical expression for the frequency-dependent permittivity, which s uccessfully accounts for the experimental spectra. The resulting parameters are consistent with the electrophoretic mobility of the liposome. In the r ange of electrolyte concentrations investigated, we do observe some effect of the counterion valency, but there is no other ion specificity in the dou ble-layer dynamics.