design of supported membranes tethered via metalaffinity ligandreceptor pairs model lipid layers are very promising in investigating the complex network of recognition transport and signaling processes at membranes we have developed a novel and generic approach to create supported lipid membranes tethered by metalaffinity binding by selfassembly we have generated various interfaces that display histidine sequences 6xhis via polymer spacers these histidinefunctionalized interfaces are designed to allow specific docking and fusion of vesicles containing metalchelating lipids by means of surface plasmon resonance and atomic force microscopy we analyzed the formation and subsequently the structure of these solidsupported membranes although the affinity constant of single ligandreceptor pairs is only in the micromolar range very stable immobilization of these membranes was observed this behavior can be explained by multivalent interactions resembling many features of cell adhesion the process is highly specific because vesicle docking and bilayer formation are strictly dependent on the presence of metalaffinity ligandreceptor pairs the surface accessibility and geometry of these tethered membranes were probed by binding of histidinetagged polypeptides the supported membranes show adsorption kinetics and values similar to planar supported monolayers using various combinations of metalchelating and histidinetagged lipids or thiols these metalaffinitytethered membranes should make a great impact on probing and eventually understanding the dynamic dialog of reconstituted membrane proteins