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Thermal transport across membranes and the Kapitza length from photothermal microscopy

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Abstract

An analytical model is presented for light scattering associated with heat transport near a cell membrane that divides a complex system into two topologically distinct half-spaces. Our analysis is motivated by experiments on vibrational photothermal microscopy which have not only demonstrated remarkably high contrast and resolution, but also are capable of providing label-free local information of heat transport in complex morphologies. In the first Born approximation, the derived Green’s function leads to the reconstruction of a full 3D image with photothermal contrast obtained using both amplitude and phase detection of periodic excitations. We show that important fundamental parameters including the Kapitza length and Kapitza resistance can be derived from experiments. Our goal is to spur additional experimental studies with high-frequency modulation and heterodyne detection in order to make contact with recent theoretical molecular dynamics calculations of thermal transport properties in membrane systems.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof LD Ziegler, Prof Ji-Xin Cheng, and their groups for discussions and acknowledge the support from the National Institutes of Health (123456 and R01GM142012) and the National Science Foundation (NSF ECCS-1846659).

Funding

Support is acknowledged from the National Institutes of Health (123456 and R01GM142012) and the National Science Foundation (NSF ECCS-1846659).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Panagis D. Samolis & Michelle Y. Sander

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Michelle Y. Sander & Shyamsunder Erramilli

  3. The Photonics Center, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Panagis D. Samolis, Michelle Y. Sander & Shyamsunder Erramilli

  4. Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Mi K. Hong & Shyamsunder Erramilli

  5. Department of Physics, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Onuttom Narayan

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  1. Panagis D. Samolis
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  2. Michelle Y. Sander
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  4. Shyamsunder Erramilli
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Contributions

PDS carried out the simulations, supervised by MYS and assisted by SE. ON worked out the theory. SE and MKH drafted the manuscript, and all authors contributed to the final writing.

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Correspondence to Shyamsunder Erramilli or Onuttom Narayan.

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Samolis, P.D., Sander, M.Y., Hong, M.K. et al. Thermal transport across membranes and the Kapitza length from photothermal microscopy. J Biol Phys 49, 365–381 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10867-023-09636-0

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