Department of Food Science and Engineering, School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
Key Laboratory of Meat Processing of Sichuan, Chengdu University, Chengdu 610106, China.
Langmuir. 2022 Sep 13;38(36):10986-10993. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.2c01445. Epub 2022 Aug 31.
Jerky is a type of meat product traditionally produced using a hang-drying process to achieve desirable textural properties. Inspired by the jerky processing, we present a strategy for fabricating strong alginate hydrogels with highly anisotropic structures via stretching and drying under constant stress. The tunable stretching process endowed the alginate hydrogels with adjustable mechanical properties and structural features by promoting the orientation and aggregation of the constituent polymers. At a high water content of about 80%, the tensile strength of the obtained hydrogel was increased to 20 MPa, which was 10 times higher than that of the hydrogel without the stretching process. Moreover, these hydrogels can be favorably compared with other common structural materials. This paper introduces a facile strategy to tune the structural alignment and mechanical properties of hydrogels, which will expand the applicability of the natural hydrogels formed by non-covalent interactions.
肉干是一种传统的肉类制品，通常采用悬挂干燥工艺来达到理想的质地。受肉干加工的启发，我们提出了一种通过在恒应力下拉伸和干燥来制备具有各向异性结构的高强度海藻酸盐水凝胶的策略。可调拉伸过程通过促进组成聚合物的取向和聚集，赋予海藻酸盐水凝胶可调的机械性能和结构特征。在约 80%的高含水量下，所得到的水凝胶的拉伸强度增加到 20 MPa，比没有拉伸过程的水凝胶高 10 倍。此外，这些水凝胶可以与其他常见的结构材料相媲美。本文介绍了一种调节水凝胶结构取向和机械性能的简便策略，这将扩展由非共价相互作用形成的天然水凝胶的适用性。
