Recent Advances in Self-Assembling Gels

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue on “Recent Advances in Self-Assembling Gels” is focused on the design of molecules/peptides/polymers and their hierarchical self-assembly to form gels in media of interest (hydrogels/organogels). The formed gels showed potential applications from chemical to the biological arena owing to their three-dimensional network.

Gels are mainly formed through the self-assembly or co-assembly approach between building blocks. The building blocks undergo self-assembly through noncovalent interactions such as H-bonding, hydrophobic interaction, van der Waals interaction, p-p staking, host–guest interaction, and cation-p, to name a few. It was found that the resultant gel is weak and less stable in nature; thus, to increase the stiffness and stability, covalent interactions like disulphide bond formation, imine bond formation, etc., were also taken into consideration during gelator design. To tune the gelators' self-assembly, different stimuli, including pH, heat, light, and sound, play an essential role in creating some unique properties in the gel system. In recent times, transient gel formation has made a separate field in the arena of system chemistry, in which the starting building blocks undergo fuel-driven self-assembly for a short period, operating far from equilibrium. Over the past few decades, self-assembled hydrogels have received enormous attention in the field of material science, nanobiotechnology, and nanomedicine, particularly peptide hydrogels owing to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and material properties like modulus values and a very similar structure to the ECM of mammalian tissue.

Therefore, this Special Issue will cover a broad range of representative self-assembled gel systems with their application in the respective area. The issue will also cover review articles on the recent progress of self-assembled gels (preferably within the last five years). Computational science studies to create a dynamic combinatorial library (DCL) and their tendency to form self-assembled hydrogels are also welcomed in this Special Issue.

Dr. Bapan Pramanik
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Gels is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• self-assembly
• non-covalent interactions
• covalent interactions
• transient self-assembly
• nanostructures
• organogel
• hydrogel
• peptides
• polymers
• small molecules
• applications