Crystallization
defines what the world is all about, ranging from
biomineralization in living organisms to various materials in our
lives. During these processes, peptides and proteins involved in biomineralization
set excellent examples of additive-controlled crystallization. To
mimic these natural systems and develop biomimetic approaches for
controlling inorganic crystallization, sequence-defined peptoids,
as one of the most advanced synthetic foldamers that mimic peptides
and proteins, have been recently designed and explored for directing
the formation of inorganic (nano)materials acting as surfactant-like
soluble additives or self-assembled scaffolds due to their unique
advantages (e.g., high programmability and stability). In this review,
we extract the main concepts of peptoid engineering and highlight
the recent advances in peptoid-controlled inorganic crystal formation.
Our focus is to correlate the peptoid side chain chemistry with the
morphological and kinetic control over inorganic (nano)crystal formation
and to understand the principles in these biomimetic inorganic crystallization
systems with respect to the predictive synthesis of organic–inorganic
hybrid materials with desirable structures and physicochemical properties.