The changes in pore sizes due to dehydration are also reflected
in Fig. 10 where after 60% of the total amount of water is removed,
the distance spans from water to the nearest polysaccharide chains
are significantly shorter than those shown in Fig. 6for the same
systems prior to dehydration. Fig. 10 also shows that the lower
density polysaccharide systems consistently have larger pores than
their high density counterparts during dehydration. More importantly,
a comparison between Figs. 6 and 10 indicates that by
reducing the pore sizes, dehydration increases the water–macromolecule
interactions while slightly decreases the water–water
interactions. Therefore, while the overall thermal conductivity of