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Platonic and Archimedean geometries in multicomponent elastic membranes

One of the challenges of modern biomedical engineering is to construct suitable vessels for targeted drug delivery. Main focus of research is geared towards using amphiphiles to assemble suitable vesicles. In order to enhance the integrity, it is often desirable for vesicles to be made of solid (crystalline) walls. The subtle interplay between inherently spherical geometry and crystalline order leads to a number of technological and theoretical challenges. Using sophisticated computer modelling and simulations we have showed that presence of two elastically distinct components in vesicle’s wall can lead to faceting into a variety of regular and irregular polyhedral shapes.