Eur. Phys. J. E (2007) 23: 313-317
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2006-10212-0

Regular Article

Temperature effect on the transport dynamics of a small molecule through a liposome bilayer

¹ Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 305-701, Daejeon, Korea
² Korea Institute for Advanced Study, 130-722, Seoul, Korea
³ Material Research Laboratory, University of California, 93106, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

^* e-mail: mwkim@kaist.ac.kr

Received: 19 September 2006
Accepted: 15 June 2007
Published online: 31 July 2007

Abstract

An ion having hydrophobic parts can directly transport through the liposome bilayer without an ion channel and its transport mechanism can be explained by the free-volume theory. This was confirmed by investigating the temperature effect on the transport dynamics of organic cations through anionic liposome bilayers made of unsaturated and saturated lipids by using optical second-harmonic generation (SHG) technique. This study provides useful information to design practical temperature-controlled drug delivery systems.