Chain packing modes in crystalline surfactant and lipid bilayers

The main features of a subcell catalogue for the packing of molecules with long alkyl chains were developed in the period of 1950–1975 based on single crystal studies. In the last number of years many deviations from these typical packing modes in a subcell lattice were found and analyzed, particularly for surfactant molecules. From early on, energy approximations were already presented, but these became more dominant with the progress in hardware and software developments. Recently, new inputs are coming from the calculation of lattice energies for chain packing modes in connection with new experimental results. In this contribution, the most common chain packing modes already suggested in published papers are presented. The different packing modes are analyzed using lattice energy calculations. The results are discussed using a presentation method that allows us to find out interrelations between various packing modes.