Lipid and polymer vesicles offer tremendous potential in the development of synthetic micro- and nano-reaction vessels. The transport of chemical species across membranes is an important consideration in the design of vesicle-based reactors. While the permeability of charged species across a wide range of liposome membranes has been explored extensively, the transport of ions across membranes assembled from the growing library of synthetic block copolymers has received much less attention. Here, we directly compare the H+/OH- permeability coefficients across membranes composed of either DOPC lipid or poly[ethyleneoxide-b-butadiene]. Due to differences in composition and molecular weight, the polymer vesicles are capable of maintaining pH-gradients of >6 units for at least several weeks.Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.

H<sup>+</sup>/OH<sup>−</sup> permeability across polymer bilayer membranes

245th National Meeting (2013)

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H+/OH− permeability across polymer bilayer membranes

H⁺/OH⁻ permeability across polymer bilayer membranes