Application of pressure-modulated differential scanning calorimetry to the determination of relaxation kinetics of multilamellar lipid vesicles

We report an extension of the recently published PMDSC method that permitted synchronous determination of heat capacity and expansibility when using slow, defined pressure formats in a DSC scan. Here we applied continuously opposing pressure changes that are fast compared to the time constants of the DSC instrument to study relaxation kinetics of phospholipids. Investigations of multilamellar vesicles of DPPC or DSPC in water revealed for both lipids relaxation times of about 30 s at the maximum of the main transition peak and about 15 s at the maximum of the pretransition. The relaxation times in the transition range are proportional to heat capacity of main- and pretransition. The molecular origin of the relaxation processes appears to stem from pressure-induced water fluxes between the interbilayer region and the bulk water phase.