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Tension-Induced Straightening Transition Of Self-Assembled Helical Ribbons, Yevgeniya V. Zastavker, Brice Smith, George B. Benedek
Tension-Induced Straightening Transition Of Self-Assembled Helical Ribbons, Yevgeniya V. Zastavker, Brice Smith, George B. Benedek
Yevgeniya V. Zastavker
Helical ribbons with pitch angles of either 11° or 54° self-assemble in a wide variety of quaternary surfactant-phospholipid/fatty acid-sterol-water systems. By elastically deforming these helices, we examined their response to uniaxial forces. Under sufficient tension, a low pitch helix reversibly separates into a straight domain with a pitch angle of 90° and a helical domain with a pitch angle of 16.5°. Using a newly developed continuum elastic free energy model, we have shown that this phenomenon can be understood as a first order mechanical phase transition.