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Science 16 August 1996:
Vol. 273. no. 5277, pp. 892 - 898
DOI: 10.1126/science.273.5277.892
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Articles

Biomimetic Pathways for Assembling Inorganic Thin Films

I. A. Aksay, M. Trau, S. Manne, I. Honma, N. Yao, L. Zhou, P. Fenter, P. M. Eisenberger, S. M. Gruner

Living organisms construct various forms of laminated nanocomposites through directed nucleation and growth of inorganics at self-assembled organic templates at temperatures below 100°C and in aqueous solutions. Recent research has focused on the use of functionalized organic surfaces to form continuous thin films of single-phase ceramics. Continuous thin films of mesostructured silicates have also been formed on hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces through a two-step mechanism. First, under acidic conditions, surfactant micellar structures are self-assembled at the solid/liquid interface, and second, inorganic precursors condense to form an inorganic-organic nanocomposite. Epitaxial coordination of adsorbed surfactant tubules is observed on mica and graphite substrates, whereas a random arrangement is observed on amorphous silica. The ability to process ceramic-organic nanocomposite films by these methods provides new technological opportunities.

The authors are at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-5263, USA. I. A. Aksay, M. Trau, and I. Honma are in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute; S. Manne and N. Yao are in the Princeton Materials Institute; and L. Zhou, P. Fenter, P. M. Eisenberger, and S. M. Gruner are in the Department of Physics and the Princeton Materials Institute.


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