Neutron reflection from interfaces with biological and biomimetic materials

During the past decade, neutron reflectivity has increasingly become an important technique for the characterization of biological and biomimetic thin films. Advancements in instrumentation, sample environment and measurement protocols now make it possible to obtain Angstrom-level information about the composition of these materials along the axis perpendicular to the plane of the membrane. A newly developed phase-sensitive neutron reflectivity technique now allows direct inversion of the reflectivity data to obtain unique compositional depth profiles of the films. This review concentrates on the development of these neutron reflectivity methods for the study of peptide and protein interactions with model membranes. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.