Fabrication of vesicles made from synthetic phospholipids and block copolymers has been attracting much attention for potential applications in microreactors, drug delivery systems, and as a model system for living organisms. Although a large variety of synthetic vesicles were created, it is still a major challenge to mimic dynamic behaviors which appear in living vesicles such as a nuclear envelope and synaptic vesicles. Herein, we demonstrated a totally synthetic vesicle which can afford to show periodic structure oscillations by incorporating transition metal complex (Ru(bpy)3) catalyzing an oscillatory chemical reaction (Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction) into a thermo-responsive diblock copolymer. Self-regulated formation and fragmentation cycles of the artificial vesicles are investigated in terms of time-resolved dynamic light scattering measurements as well as direct observations of oscillating behavior by using an optical microscope.

Self-oscillating vesicles

248th National Meeting (2014)

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