Dipalmitoylphosphatidylethanolamine (DPPE) and dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC), 15N-labeled in the polar head group, were synthesized. The proton-decoupled 15N spectra of DPPC and DPPE in aqueous dispersion have exactly the form anticipated for powder line shapes governed by an axially symmetric shielding tensor. The chemical shift anisotropy (delta sigma) of DPPC is lower than 0.4 ppm at 30 degrees C and vanished when the temperature or the half-height line width is increased; DPPE always exhibits an asymmetric line shape, and 15N NMR spectra of DPPE are obtained at various temperatures and simulated to measure exactly the chemical shift anisotropy. At each temperature, the order parameter of the C-N bond segment is derivated from delta sigma and reveals that the average orientation of the C-N bond around the axis of rotation is near the "magic angle" (54.7 degrees). Isotropic correlation times are derived from T1, which are higher than values obtained for phosphatidylcholine by other nuclei. Arrhenius plots of T1 and T2 allowed us to calculate the activation energy for the motion of the DPPE and the DPPC C-N bond. The value of this activation energy for the DPPE (53 kJ/mol) is higher than the one found for the DPPC C-N bond (32 kJ/mol). These differences agree with the capacity of the ethanolamine head groups to bind noncovalently to their neighbors in the plane of the membrane surface. A direct titration curve of the amino group is achieved by the variation of the chemical shift with the bulk pH, and the interfacial pKa is calculated to be 11.1.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)