Electrical excitability of artificial enzyme membranes. IV. Theoretical approach of the membrane potential of synthetic proteinic films.

This paper deals with the theoretical approach of the membrane potential of artificial proteinic film. Programming techniques using finite difference simulations for the steady state and transient solutions of the Nernst-Planck and Poisson equations were used and solved by the collocation and corrector methods. This approach allows one to calculate the membrane potential without any discontinuity between the Donnan and the diffusion potentials, the thickness of the boundary layers being automatically determined by the intrinsic properties of the solution and of the membrane. The theoretical results are compared with experimental potentials measured on proteinic artificial films.