Terahertz hydration dynamics in aqueous polysaccharides

We study the hydration dynamics of polysaccharides of commercial and biological significance, namely, agave fructans, inulin, and maltodextrin, employing terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. In addition, we employ differential scanning calorimetry as a supporting technique. With the two techniques, we extract the hydration number for these polysaccharides in order to estimate their hydration ability. We further discuss characteristics of the H-bond network in the hydration shell.