The blood clotting protein fibrinogen is known for its excellent biocompatibility and cell adhesion. The usual strategy to use its full potential is to create fibers and/or hydrogels out of it, most commonly enzymatically in form of fibrin. There are, however, many pathways to create fibrinogen-based materials via enzyme-free approaches. In this study, we investigate these possibilities even further and present a temperature-induced method to obtain enzyme-free fibrous hydrogels from a precursor within 30 min. The keys to create these gels are the addition of calcium salts and a defined temperature program. Successful gelation first requires an incubation period at 37 °C for approximately 10 h. This leads to the formation of a ready-to-gel precursor, which remains stable for 2.5 days when the temperature is unchanged. When lowering the temperature to 25 – 10 °C, the mixture irreversibly gels within 30 min. If the incubation period is, however, canceled earlier, the precursor will not gel at all. Additionally, this process succeeds only with Ca2+ ions; if Mg2+ is used instead, the solution remains unchanged while the addition of Sr2+ leads to amorphous precipitation over time. In this study, this remarkable process is characterized regarding optimal reaction conditions by means of scanning electron microscopy, rheology, and dynamic light scattering.
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