Multifunctional Inosine Monophosphate Coordinated Metal–Organic Hydrogel: Multistimuli Responsiveness, Self-Healing Properties, and Separation of Water from Organic Solvents

Outfitted with numerous coordination and hydrogen bonding sites, nucleotides represent a class of naturally occurring ligands for coordination with metals leading to both hard and soft materials for a wide range of applications. Reported herein, a new multistimuli-responsive metal–organic hydrogel through the spontaneous self-associative complexation of inosine 5′-monophosphate (IMP) with Ag(I) ions in aqueous medium. The strong and optically transparent hydrogels were formed without the aid of any external influences such as heating/cooling cycles or ultrasonication and comprise of an interconnected matrix of nanofilaments constructed from helically stacked, chiral arrays of Ag-IMP dimers. The metallogel exhibits diverse properties including self-healing, stimuli-responsiveness, transparency, and injectibility. The direct gelation specificity to Ag (I) ions is highly phase selective only to water, and the ability of the freeze-dried xerogel to gel water is exploited for the separation of water from various organic solvents. Further, the Ag-IMP hydrogel exhibits efficient antibacterial activity against both Gram-negative Escherichia coli ( E. coli ) and Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus ( S. aureus ) bacteria. Ag nanoparticles could be generated in situ without disrupting the hydrogel network through photoreduction by light. The robustness and multidimensional applicability combined with ease of synthesis make this coordination driven hydrogel a prospective material for environmental and biomedical applications.