Investigating the effects of membrane deformability on artificial capsule adhesion to the functionalized surface

Understanding, manipulating and controlling cellular adhesion processes can be critical in developing biomedical technologies. Adhesive mechanisms can be used to the target, pattern and separate cells such as leukocytes from whole blood for biomedical applications. The deformability response of the cell directly affects the rolling and adhesion behavior under viscous linear shear flow conditions. To that end, the primary objective of the present study was to investigate numerically the influence of capsule membrane’s nonlinear material behavior (i.e. elastic-plastic to strain hardening) on the rolling and adhesion behavior of representative artificial capsules. Specifically, spherical capsules with radius of \(3.75\, \upmu \hbox {m}\) were represented using an elastic membrane governed by a Mooney–Rivlin strain energy functions. The surfaces of the capsules were coated with P-selectin glycoprotein-ligand-1 to initiate binding interaction with P-selectin-coated planar surface with density of \(150\,\upmu \hbox {m}^{-2}\) under linear shear flow varying from 100 to \(400\,\hbox {s}^{-1}\). The numerical model is based on the Immersed Boundary Method for rolling of deformable capsule in shear flow coupled with Monte Carlo simulation for receptor/ligand interaction modeled using Bell model. The results reveal that the mechanical properties of the capsule play an important role in the rolling behavior and the binding kinetics between the capsule contact surface and the substrate. The rolling behavior of the strain hardening capsules is relatively smoother and slower compared to the elastic-plastic capsules. The strain hardening capsules exhibits higher contact area at any given shear rate compared to elastic-plastic capsules. The increase in contact area leads to decrease in rolling velocity. The capsule contact surface is not in complete contact with the substrate because of thin lubrication film that is trapped between the capsule and substrate. This creates a concave shape on the bottom surface of the capsule that is referred to as a dimple. In addition, the present study demonstrates that the average total bond force from the capsules lifetime increases by 37 % for the strain hardening capsules compared to elastic-plastic capsules at shear rate of \(400\,\hbox {s}^{-1}\). Finally, the model demonstrates the effect of finite membrane deformation on the coupling between hydrodynamic and receptor/ligand interaction.