Nanocellulose-short peptide self-assembly for improved mechanical strength and barrier performance

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Biomaterials Engineering

Background:

• Cellulose nanofibers (CNF) are abundant renewable resources with growing applications in hybrid materials.
• Current methods often rely on covalent functionalization, limiting versatility.
• A noncovalent approach using peptides offers a new route for CNF modification.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a noncovalent strategy for engineering hybrid hydrogels and films using unfunctionalized CNF and peptide additives.
• To investigate the impact of short peptides (DFNKF, DF(I)NKF, DF(F5)NKF) on CNF properties.
• To explore the tunability of material characteristics like hydrophobicity, wettability, and barrier properties.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing short peptides as supramolecular additives with unfunctionalized CNF.
• Formulating hybrid hydrogels and subsequently producing films via vacuum filtration.
• Characterizing rheological properties, surface wettability, hydrophobicity, and water vapor barrier performance.

Main Results:

• Peptides significantly enhanced CNF rheological properties, increasing dynamic moduli by over an order of magnitude, even at low concentrations (0.01-0.1% w/w).
• CNF-peptide films exhibited tailored hydrophobicity and surface wettability, controllable by peptide content and halogen type.
• Fluorinated peptides (DF(F5)NKF) notably improved water vapor barrier properties and reduced water uptake in CNF films.

Conclusions:

• A modular and straightforward noncovalent method was established for creating bio-based CNF-peptide materials.
• Peptide inclusion allows for facile functionalization and precise modulation of material properties.
• These CNF-peptide materials show promise for applications in sustainable packaging and advanced biomedical devices.