This study demonstrates that an amorphous film of glucose has many of the features of water as a medium for solvating ions and, at low concentrations, maintaining ion pair separation. Aqueous solutions of glucose containing dissolved salts are evaporated to form a homogeneous glucose glass where the distribution of the solute in solution is preserved in the evaporated glass film. Cluster ions form in aqueous solutions at high solute concentration, and glucose films made from these solutions form gas-phase cluster ions when the film is excited by a high energy density pulse. These cluster ions do not form in dilute solutions and are not present in the mass spectrum of ions desorbd from films prepared from these solutions. Non-polar ions concentrate at the surface of aqueous solutions owing to the hydrophobic interaction and glucose glass films prepared from these solutions show, by mass spectrometry, that these features are retained in the glucose film. The salts studied include KCI, NaBr, LiCF,SO, ,
(tert-butyl),NI and (C,HS),NBF,. The concentration of the salt is the important variable in the study and ranges from a mole fraction of O.l-lO-,.For non-polar ions, the abundance of the molecular ion is not significantly changed over a wide range of dilutions.