Hydrogen Bonding\nPolarization Strengthening the Peptide-Based\nHydrogels

Peptide-based hydrogels form a kind of promising material\nbroadly\nused in biomedicine and biotechnology. However, the correlation between\ntheir hydrogen bonding dynamics and mechanical properties remains\nuncertain. In this study, we found that the adoption of β-sheet\nand α-helix secondary structures by ECF-5 and GFF-5 peptides,\nrespectively, could further form fiber networks to immobilize water\nmolecules into hydrogels. Increasing the peptide concentrations improvethe\nsolidity of these hydrogels, as evidenced by their higher storage\nmodulus (<i>G</i>′) values determined by a frequency\nsweep. Raman and FTIR spectroscopies probed a blue shift in the O–D\nstretching vibration in both ECF-5 and GFF-5 hydrogels, indicating\nthe D–O bond contraction and stiffness gain. This finding provides\nvaluable insight and offers an efficient means of modulating the mechanism\nof mechanical properties.