Abstract
Aqueous sugar solutions play a prominent role in the cryopreservation of biological tissues both in nature and in industry. However, the function of these sugars in protecting tissues during freezing and thawing is not fully understood. Some speculate that sugars function to promote vitrification of the solution as opposed to harmful crystalization. Others speculate that the sugar molecules preferentially coordinate with the tissue to produce a protective, hydrogen-bonded layer which serves to expel unwanted water. Here we report dynamic light scattering studies of aqueous maltose solutions which reveal that significant clustering of maltose occurs in these solutions. This cluster growth is shown to be consistent with the evolution towards an interconnected carbohydrate network forming at maltose concentrations near the percolation threshold observed in recent molecular dynamics simulations.