Effects of Cations on the Behaviour of Lipid Cubic Phases.

Inverse bicontinuous cubic structures formed by lipids have been demonstrated in a wide variety of applications, from a host matrix for proteins for crystallisation, to templates for nanoscale structures. Recent work has focused on tuning their properties to realize such applications, often by manipulating the structure by introducing other lipids with different properties such as charge or packing. However, they are often prepared in the presence of solutions containing salt, counteracting the effects, for example, charged lipids, and fundamentally changing the structures obtained.