The self‐assembly of biomolecules can provide a new approach for the design of functional systems with a diverse range of hierarchical nanoarchitectures and atomically defined structures. In this regard, peptides, particularly short peptides, are attractive building blocks because of their ease of establishing structure–property relationships, their productive synthesis, and the possibility of their hybridization with other motifs. Several assembling peptides, such as ionic‐complementary peptides, cyclic peptides, peptide amphiphiles, the Fmoc‐peptide, and aromatic dipeptides, are widely studied. Recently, studies on material synthesis and the application of tyrosine‐rich short peptide‐based systems have demonstrated that tyrosine units serve as not only excellent assembly motifs but also multifunctional templates. Tyrosine has a phenolic functional group that contributes to π–π interactions for conformation control and efficient charge transport by proton‐coupled electron‐transfer reactions in natural systems. Here, the critical roles of the tyrosine motif with respect to its electrochemical, chemical, and structural properties are discussed and recent discoveries and advances made in tyrosine‐rich short peptide systems from self‐assembled structures to peptide/inorganic hybrid materials are highlighted. A brief account of the opportunities in design optimization and the applications of tyrosine peptide‐based biomimetic materials is included.

The process of memory and learning in biological systems is multimodal, as several kinds of input signals cooperatively determine the weight of information transfer and storage. This study describes a peptide-based platform of materials and devices that can control the coupled conduction of protons and electrons and thus create distinct regions of synapse-like performance depending on the proton activity. We utilized tyrosine-rich peptide-based films and generalized our principles by demonstrating both memristor and synaptic devices. Interestingly, even memristive behavior can be controlled by both voltage and humidity inputs, learning and forgetting process in the device can be initiated and terminated by protons alone in peptide films. We believe that this work can help to understand the mechanism of biological memory and lay a foundation to realize a brain-like device based on ions and electrons.

We have investigated the role of peptide folding and developed strategies to make assembled gold nanostructures.

Black phosphorus (BP) has shown great potential as a semiconductor material beyond graphene and MoS2 because of its intrinsic band gap and high mobility. Moreover, the biocompatibility of the final biodegradation products of BP has led to extensive research on biomedical applications. Herein, physically transient field-effect transistors (FETs) based on black phosphorus have been demonstrated using peptide insulator as a gate dielectric layer. The fabricated devices show high hole mobility up to 468 cm2 V–1 s–1 and on–off current ratio over 103. The combined use of black phosphorus, peptide, and molybdenum provides rapid disappearance of the devices within 36 h. Dissolution kinetics and cytotoxicity of black phosphorus are assessed to clarify its availability to be applied in transient electronics. This work provides transient FETs with high degradability and high performance based on biocompatible black phosphorus.