Scattering from laterally heterogeneous vesicles. I. Model-independent analysis

This is the first of a series of papers considering the scattering from laterally heterogeneous vesicles. Here, it is shown that contrast variation studies on unilamellar vesicles can be analyzed in a model-independent manner to detect lateral segregation in model membranes. In particular, it is demonstrated that the Porod invariant, Q = \textstyle\int q^{2}I (q )\,{\rm d}q, is related to the scattering length density contrast between …