Because the plasma membrane and other cellular envelopes have thicknesses which are small with respect to the wave length of light it has so far been impossible to investigate certain aspects of their molecular structure. Polarized light studies give information about the orientations and partial volumes of the lipide and protein constituents (1), but the envelopes in most cases are too thin or are otherwise unsuitable for X-ray diffraction analysis. Some knowledge of the relative amounts and types of proteins and lipides has been obtained from chemical analyses in the special case of the red cell envelope (2). However, these methods reveal nothing about the structure of the thin film-like envelopes in the plane of the surface. The possibility of a mosaic surface structure, which might be due to local differences in thickness or optical density, is of obvious significance in permeability problems and in other phenomena involving the surface...
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Waugh et al. (1940) studied this question.