An unusual pathway for the membrane wrapping of rodlike nanoparticles and the orientation- and membrane wrapping-dependent nanoparticle interaction.

Although rapid progress has been made in understanding the interaction of nanoparticles (NPs) with lipid membrane, little is known about the interaction between neighboring NPs on the membrane. With the aid of computer simulation techniques, in this work we systematically investigate the membrane mediated interaction between anisotropic NPs with at least one dimension with the size of several nanometers, and find that the interaction between neighboring NPs is orientation- and membrane wrapping-dependent. For rodlike NPs with a weak NP-membrane adhesion strength that the membrane wrapping of NPs occurs at a slow rate and has a limited extent, the orientation-dependent interaction between two neighboring anisotropic NPs arises purely as a result of non-homogeneous distribution of membrane curvature induced by anisotropic NP adsorption. While for rodlike NPs with a strong NP-membrane adhesion, the rapid wrapping rate and extensive wrapping cause the different responses of upper and lower leaflets of the membrane to the NP adsorption, which force the NPs to enter the hydrophobic part of the membrane and lead to the formation of inverted micelles surrounding the NPs. The unusual asymmetrical wrapping also induces orientation-dependent NP interaction, which shows a short-range repulsion, intermediate-range attraction and long-range repulsion for rodlike NPs.