Universal Patterns of Equilibrium Cluster Growth in Aqueous Sugars Observed by Dynamic Light Scattering

Dynamic light scattering performed on aqueous solutions of three sugars (glucose, maltose and sucrose) reveal a common pattern of sugar cluster formation with a narrow cluster size distribution. In each case, equilibrium clusters form whose size increases with increasing sugar content in an identical power law manner in advance of a common, critical-like, percolation threshold near 83 wt% sugar. The critical exponent of the power law divergence of the cluster size varies with temperature, increasing with decreasing temperature, due to changes in the strength of the intermolecular hydrogen bond and appears to vanish for temperatures in excess of 90 °C. Detailed analysis of the cluster growth process suggests a two-stage process: an initial cluster phase formed at low volume fractions, φ, consisting of non-interacting, monodisperse sugar clusters whose size increases φ(1/3) followed by an aggregation stage, active at concentrations above about φ = 40%, where cluster-cluster contact first occurs.