Alignment of Mesostructured Silica on a Langmuir-Blodgett Film

Biomimetic control over the hierarchical structure of inorganic materialsusing ordered organic surfaces can give rise to elongation and uniaxial alignment, shown here for mesostructured silica particles (see Figure). The alignment direction was normal to the axis of the polymer chains of the Langmuir–Blodgett film, which indicates that an alignment mechanism different from the rubbing method dominates this alignment.