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Substantial progress has been made in applying nanotubes in biomedical applications such as bioimaging and drug delivery due to their unique architecture, characterized by very large internal surface areas and high aspect ratios. However, the biomedical applications of organic nanotubes, especially for those assembled from sequence-defined molecules, are very uncommon. In this paper, the synthesis of two new peptoid nanotubes (PepTs1 and PepTs2) is reported by using sequence-defined and ligand-tagged peptoids as building blocks. These nanotubes are highly robust due to sharing a similar structure to those of nontagged ones, and offer great potential to hold guest molecules for biomedical applications. The findings indicate that peptoid nanotubes loaded with doxorubicin drugs are promising candidates for targeted tumor cell imaging and chemo-photodynamic therapy.

Rational design of high active and robust nonprecious metal catalysts with excellent catalytic efficiency in oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is extremely vital for making the water splitting process more energy efficient and economical. Among these noble metal-free catalysts, transition-metal-based nanomaterials are considered as one of the most promising OER catalysts due to their relatively low-cost intrinsic activities, high abundance, and diversity in terms of structure and morphology. Herein, a facile sugar-blowing technique and low-temperature phosphorization are reported to generate 3D self-supported metal involved carbon nanostructures, which are termed as Co2P@Co/nitrogen-doped carbon (Co2P@Co/N-C). By capitalizing on the 3D porous nanostructures with high surface area, homogeneously dispersed active sites, the intimate interaction between active sites, and 3D N-doped carbon, the resultant Co2P@Co/N-C exhibits satisfying OER performance superior to CoO@Co/N-C, delivering 10 mA cm−2 at overpotential of 0.32 V. It is worth noting that in contrast to the substantial current density loss of RuO2, Co2P@Co/N-C shows much enhanced catalytic activity during the stability test and a 1.8-fold increase in current density is observed after stability test. Furthermore, the obtained Co2P@Co/N-C can also be served as an excellent nonprecious metal catalyst for methanol and glucose electrooxidation in alkaline media, further extending their potential applications.