Water Self-Diffusion in Glassy and Liquid Maltose Measured by Raman Microscopy and NMR

Raman microscopy and isotope labeling have been used for the first time to measure water self-diffusion in carbohydrate glasses. Together with pulsed-gradient stimulated-echo NMR, this method yielded the self-diffusion coefficients of water in amorphous maltose over 8 orders of magnitude, from the liquid to the glassy state. There are consistencies and major differences between our data and those obtained by evaporative drying. Water diffusion is remarkably fast in maltose glasses, decouples from maltose diffusion, and is not strongly affected by the glass transition.