Local adhesion of membranes to striped surface domains

Flexible membranes which adhere to a substrate surface along striped surfac e domains were theoretically studied using a "superposition" approach and M onte Carlo (MC) simulations. In the "superposition" approach, the fluctuati on-induced repulsion between the membrane and the nonadhesive surface domai ns was approximately taken into account as a local potential. A detailed co mparison of this superposition approach and the MC data shows that the stre ngth of the fluctuation-induced potential depends both on the boundary cond itions and on the physical quantity under consideration and, thus, must be viewed as a fit parameter. The shape of the adhering membrane which consist s of unbound membrane arches between bound membrane segments is accessible to experiments using, for example, reflection interference microscopy.