Incoherent Neutron Spin-Echo Spectroscopy as an Option to Study Long-Range Lipid Diffusion

Figure 1

The diffusion of lipids in a bilayer has been measured by various optical and neutron techniques. There still remains a gap (from ≈10 nm to ≈200 nm) in the characterization of lipid motion between the regimes accessible by fluorescence measurements and neutron backscattering, resulting in a clear difference in the diffusion coefficients observed on each side of this gap. Neutron spin echo (NSE) can access significantly longer length scales than other neutron techniques to give insight into the character of motion at mesoscopic length scales.