Electromagnetic and thermal analysis for lipid bilayer membranes exposed to RF fields

Experiments with pulsed radio frequency fields have shown influence on the low-frequency behavior of lipid bilayer membranes. Here, the authors present an electromagnetic and thermal analysis of the used exposure device to clarify whether the observed effects have a thermal cause and to determine th...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on biomedical engineering 1999-08, Vol.46 (8), p.1013-1020
Main Authors: Eibert, T.F., Alaydrus, M., Wilczewski, F., Hansen, V.W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Biomembranes
Cause effect analysis
Cell physiology
Effects of physical and chemical agents
Electromagnetic analysis
Electromagnetic devices
Electromagnetic Fields
Electromagnetic modeling
Finite element methods
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hot Temperature
Lipid Bilayers - radiation effects
Lipidomics
Materials Testing
Models, Biological
Molecular and cellular biology
Radio frequency
Radio Waves
Reproducibility of Results
Research Design
Temperature
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Experiments with pulsed radio frequency fields have shown influence on the low-frequency behavior of lipid bilayer membranes. Here, the authors present an electromagnetic and thermal analysis of the used exposure device to clarify whether the observed effects have a thermal cause and to determine the fields at the lipid bilayer. In order to model the very thin lipid bilayer (about 5 nm) accurately, the electromagnetic analysis is broken into several steps employing the finite difference time domain technique and a finite element/boundary element hybrid approach. Based on the obtained power loss due to the electromagnetic fields, the temperature change is calculated using the finite element method for the solution of the heat conduction equation. Both, the electromagnetic and the thermal analysis are performed for a variety of material parameters of the exposure device. The electromagnetic analysis shows that the exposure device is capable of producing voltages on the order of 1 mV across the lipid bilayer. The combined electromagnetic and thermal calculations reveal that the temperature oscillations due to the pulsed radio frequency fields are too small to directly influence the low-frequency behavior of the lipid bilayer.
ISSN:0018-9294
1558-2531
DOI:10.1109/10.775412