Effect of hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interaction on the formation of supramolecular hydrogels formed by L-phenylalanine derivative hydrogelator

A new hydrogelator, pyridinium bromide salt of N-6-bromohexanoyl-L-phenylamino octadecane, was synthesized. Supramolecular hydrogels can be formed through the self-assembly of this hydrogelator in water. In this work, D2O was used instead of H2O as solvent for FT-IR measurement due to the fact that it is impossible to obtain useful FT-IR information on the hydrogen bonding in water. The investigation of FT-IR and steady-state fluorescence indicated that the driving forces for the self-assembly were mainly hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interaction. Based on the data of XRD and molecular modeling, the possible mechanism of the formation of hydrogelator aggregates was proposed. (c) 2007 Ya Jiang Yang. Published by Elsevier B. V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society. All rights reserved.