Photo-orientation of Mesostructured Silica via Hierarchical Multiple Transfer

Abstract

Successful photoalignment of a mesostructured inorganic material synthesized through supramolecular templating of surfactants is performed via hierarchically relayed multiple transfer among heterointerfaces. The directional information possessed by linearly polarized light is initially captured by a latent photochromic monolayer and then fixed by a robust polymer. The photoaligned polymer film is eventually inherited to an oriented nucleation of a mesostructured surfactant/silica hybrid in the sol−gel polymerization.