Transient electric fields across cell bilayer membranes can lead to electroporation and cell fusion, effects crucial to cell viability whose biological implications have been extensively studied. However, little is known about these behaviours in a materials context. Here we find that transmembrane electric fields can lead to a massive, reversible modulation of the sliding friction between surfaces coated with lipid-bilayer membranes—a 200-fold variation, up to two orders of magnitude greater than that achieved to date. Atomistic simulations reveal that the transverse fields, resembling those at cell membranes, lead to fully reversible electroporation of the confined bilayers and the formation of inter-bilayer bridges analogous to the stalks preceding intermembrane fusion. These increase the interfacial dissipation through reduced hydration at the slip plane, forcing it to revert in part from the low-dissipation, hydrated lipid–headgroup plane to the intra-bilayer, high-dissipation acyl tail interface. Our results demonstrate that lipid bilayers under transmembrane electric fields can have striking materials modification properties.

跨细胞双层膜的瞬态电场可导致电穿孔和细胞融合，这些效应对细胞活力至关重要，其生物学意义已被广泛研究。然而，人们对材料背景下的这些行为知之甚少。在这里，我们发现跨膜电场可以导致涂有脂质双层膜的表面之间的滑动摩擦发生大规模、可逆的调节——变化达 200 倍，比迄今为止达到的水平高出两个数量级。原子模拟表明，类似于细胞膜处的横向场，导致受限双层的完全可逆电穿孔，并形成类似于膜间融合之前的茎的双层间桥。这些通过减少滑移平面处的水合来增加界面耗散，迫使其部分地从低耗散、水合脂质头基平面恢复到双层内、高耗散酰基尾部界面。我们的结果表明，跨膜电场下的脂质双层可以具有惊人的材料改性特性。