Dielectric Study of the Anti-Plasticization of Trehalose by Glycerol

Published

January 1, 2006

Author(s)

A Anopchenko, Tatiana Psurek, David L. VanderHart, Jack F. Douglas, Jan Obrzut

Abstract

Recent measurements have suggested that the antiplasticizing effect of glycerol on trehalose can significantly increase the preservation times of proteins stored in this type of preservative formulation. In order to better understand the physical origin of this phenomenon, we examine the nature of antiplasticization in trehalose-glycerol mixtures by dielectric spectroscopy. These measurements cover a broad frequency range between 40 Hz to 18 GHz (covering the secondary relaxation range of the fragile glass-former trehalose and the primary relaxation range of the strong glass-former glycerol) and a temperature (T) range bracketing room temperature (220 K to 350 K). The Havrilak-Negami function precisely fits our relaxation data and allows us to determine the temperature and composition dependence of the relaxation time t describing a relative fast dielectric relaxation process appropriate to the characterization of antiplasticization.We observe that increasing the glycerol concentration at fixed T increases t (i.e., antiplasticization) until a T dependent critical plasticization concentration xwp is reached where it then decreases precipitouslyAt a fixed concentration, we find a temperature at which antiplasticization first occurs upon cooling and we designate this as the antiplasticization temperature , Tant. The ratio of the t values for the mixture and pure trehalose is found to provide a useful measure of the extent of antiplasticization and we explore other potential measures of antiplasticization relating to the dielectric strength.

Citation

Physical Review E (Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics)

Volume

74

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

bio-preservation, dielectric relaxation, glassy dynamics, trehalose

Citation

Anopchenko, A. , Psurek, T. , VanderHart, D. , Douglas, J. and Obrzut, J. (2006), Dielectric Study of the Anti-Plasticization of Trehalose by Glycerol, Physical Review E (Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics), [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=852572 (Accessed October 14, 2025)