The irreversible thermodynamics of curved lipid membranes

Abstract: The theory of irreversible thermodynamics for arbitrarily curved lipid membranes is presented here. The coupling between elastic bending and irreversible processes such as intra-membrane lipid flow, intra-membrane phase transitions, and protein binding and diffusion is studied. The forms of the entropy production for the irreversible processes are obtained, and the corresponding thermodynamic forces and fluxes are identified. Employing the linear irreversible thermodynamic framework, the governing equations of motion along with appropriate boundary conditions are provided.