High-tolerance crystalline hydrogels formed from self-assembling cyclic dipeptide.

Peptide-based supramolecular hydrogels, as a new type of biological nanoarchitectonic structure, hold great promise for a wide range of biomedical and nanotechnological applications, such as tissue engineering, drug delivery, and electronic and photonic energy storage. In this work, a cyclic dipeptide (CDP) cyclo-(Trp-Tyr) (C-WY), which has exceptional structural rigidity and high stability, is selected as a hydrogelator for the formation of supramolecular hydrogels. The unique hydrogen bonding in C-WY endows a high propensity for self-assembly and the resulting hydrogels are revealed to be crystalline.