Lateral self-organization and ordering at nanoheterogeneous surfaces

We investigated the lateral morphological organization of a liquid crystalline material at binary heterogeneous surfaces, composed of the distribution of nanoscale domains of one molecular compound, within the continuum of a second molecular phase. These surfaces were shown to generate well-organized lateral microstructures, whose length scale, as compared to the underlying nanodomains size, is by 3 orders much larger, demonstrating the absence of any discrete contribution from the nanoscale domains. On the basis of these results, a modulation (cooperative-like effect) of the surface forces arising from the surface structures was proposed, which drives the overall wetting properties, structure formation, and related morphological transitions at these nanoheterogeneous surfaces.