PNNL

Abstract

While natural enzymes excel at catalysis and sensing, they often suffer from high cost and low stability in applications outside living systems. Among tremendous efforts made toward the design and synthesis of catalytic biomimetic materials, the approach of using crystalline nanomaterials assembled from sequence-defined polymers has emerged as a promising strategy. Herein, we report the assembly of metalloporphyrin peptoids into crystalline nanomaterials as a multifunctional system for biomimetic catalysis and sensing. The precise spatial positioning of covalently attached porphyrins within crystalline peptoid nanomaterials enables the mimicry of several enzyme active sites, including phosphotriesterase and horseradish peroxidase, for efficient catalytic hydrolysis and oxidation reactions. Additionally, the high programmability of these peptoid crystalline materials enables the creation and tuning of active site microenvironment for enhanced catalytic activity. We further demonstrate the integration of responsive organic dyes into the catalytic peptoid assemblies to achieve both detection and degradation of chemical warfare agent (CWA) mimics, even in the vapor phase. We expect this multi-functional system provides tremendous opportunities in biomimetic catalysis and sensing, including the detoxification and detection of CWAs.