リキッドマーブルを用いた微小空間におけるBZ反応の挙動

抄録

Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction is a typical example of chemical oscillation. For an application of BZ reaction to engineering, the downsizing of reaction field will be needed. We focus on liquid marble (LM) to solve this subject. LM is a stable sphere liquid covered with hydrophobic microparticles. We observed BZ reaction in LM to investigate the reaction property in small space. We succeeded in observing chemical oscillation for a long time in LM. During the observation, no bubble was produced although carbon dioxide is contained as reaction products. We found that LM tends to exhibit regular oscillation mode with a decrease in droplet size. In addition, the period of BZ reaction changes with the size. This can be explained from the effect of oxygen and the amount of particles covering a droplet. As a result, the oscillation period can be controlled by the droplet size and the amount of particles.