Ultrafast Electron Crystallography of Phospholipids

The structure and dynamics of monolayer and bilayer (see picture) phospholipids have been studied with spatiotemporal resolutions by ultrafast electron crystallography. The expansion and restructuring of the chains were observed after a femtosecond temperature jump in the substrate, and a transient structural ordering was revealed. The atomic forces were identified to be coherent in the non-equilibrium state of the assembly.