Water diffusion in fully hydrated porcine stratum corneum

Abstract The microscopic mechanisms of water diffusion in fully hydrated porcine stratum corneum (SC) have been studied by a combination of incoherent quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) and pulsed field gradient-nuclear magnetic resonance (PFG-NMR) for two sample orientations. The presence of three types of water in fully hydrated SC is inferred on the basis of water sorption isotherm data, i.e., (a) bound and (b) weakly bound hydration water forming layers between adjacent lipid bilayers of SC, as well as (c) bulk water probably located in the corneocytes and in intercellular regions. Water self-diffusion coefficients for motions parallel and perpendicular to the membrane plane of D ∥ =3.30×10 −10 m 2 /s and D ⊥ =1.56×10 −10 m 2 /s, respectively, were determined by PFG-NMR and assigned to the translational diffusion of weakly bound water. QENS measurements have been carried out using different samples hydrated with H 2 O and D 2 O, respectively, in order to separate the contribution of SC from that of the water. The QENS data for both sample orientations and two different energy resolutions can be fitted by a model which accounts for the microscopic dynamics of all three aforementioned types of water. This analysis establishes rotational diffusion coefficients for bound and weakly bound hydration water of 0.025 and 0.030 meV, respectively. Furthermore, the QENS data prove the presence of bulk water in fully hydrated SC samples.