Membrane pinning on a disordered substrate

Abstract

We investigate interactions between an elastic membrane and a substrate characterized by quenched positional disorder in the height function. We show that the positional disorder transforms the standard secondary DLVO minimum into two separate states: the hovering state characterized by a planar membrane at a finite separation from the interface and a pinned state where the membrane follows closely the asperities of the substrate and is as a consequence quite corrugated. The transition between the two states is continuous and depends on the parameters of the underlying DLVO potential as well as the parameters describing the quenched height-height correlation function of the substrate.