Recent work on the crystallisation of inorganic crystals under compressed monomolecular surfactant films has shown that two dimensional templates can be used to promote the oriented nucleation of solids. When a suitable long alkyl chain surfactant is cast on the crystallisation media a monodispersied population of crystals forms exclusively at the monolayer/solution interface. Each crystal is aligned with a specific crystallographic axis perpendicular to the plane of the monolayer suggesting that nucleation is facilitated by recognition events between the nascent inorganic solid and the organic template.For example, monolayers of the long alkyl chain surfactant, stearic acid will promote the oriented nucleation of the calcium carbonate polymorph, calcite, on the (100) face, whereas compressed monolayers of n-eicosyl sulphate will induce calcite nucleation on the (001) face, (Figure 1 & 2). An extensive program of research has confirmed the general principle that molecular recognition events at the interface (including electrostatic interactions, geometric homology, stereochemical complementarity) can be used to promote the crystal engineering process.
