By measuring the surface pressure-area isotherm at an air-water interface, an ion-exchange adduct of synthetic saponite with trimethylstearylammonium cation has been revealed to form a monolayer which is transferred on a hydrophobic glass plate as an oriented multilayer film.

Citric acid has been employed as a structural modifier for the first time to synthesize single silica nanotubes via a sol-gel process at room temperature. XRD results reveal the amorphous nature of the silica framework. SEM and TEM images show that the nanotubes were 0.5-20 mm in length, and 50-500 nm in width. TG-DTA and FTIR results indicate that the possible interaction between citric acid molecules and inorganic species should be very weak. The structural direction of ammonium citrate crystals under appropriate synthetic conditions was argued to explain the formation of particular morphologies.

Mesoporous TiO2 with well-defined spherical morphologies has been synthesized under quiescent condition via the template-assisted slow hydrolysis of titanium alkoxide in environmental humidity.

We report on the photophysical application of the multilayer films of an ion-exchange adduct of a clay (synthetic saponite) and an alkylammonium cation (trimethylstearylammonium) as prepared by the Langmuir-Blodgett method. For preparing a film, the adduct was dispersed in chloroform and spread over the surface of pure water. A surface pressure-area isotherm was obtained at 25.0 °C with complete reproducibility. The critical surface area, Ac, was defined as an area where the linear portion of the isotherm was extrapolated to zero surface pressure. From the dependence of Ac on the spread amount of the adduct, it was concluded that the adduct formed a film of a single clay layer at an air-water interface. The floating film was transferred onto a hydrophilic glass substrate or a calcium fluoride plate as a Z-type multilayer film. The film was characterized by X-ray diffraction, infrared absorption spectra, and atomic force microscopy images. The prepared clay film was revealed to act as an efficient barrier for the occurrence of photoinduced electron transfer from an amphiphilic polypyridyl-Ru(II) complex (electron donor) to an amphiphilic acetylacetonato-Ru(III) complex (electron acceptor).