Figure 8. Illustration of lateral fiber assembly along {110} planes of rutile.

(a) Precipitated rutile fibers are brought into near-crystallographic orientation by the long-range electromagnetic force field that conveys the essential structural information across a thick protective cloud of poorly ordered ligands and unreacted complexes. The force-field induces harmonic ordering of complexes before they are built into the crystal structure. Ligands and complexes adsorbed on the surface of nanoparticles prevent immediate aggregation, allowing the nanoparticles to explore many possible configurations within the interacting electric fields before they are finally attached. When the distance between the fibers becomes shorter, crystallographic alignment along the lowest energy {110} planes (Oliver et al.)⁵¹ becomes dominant. This is followed by elimination of ligands, which finally reduces the overall energy between the two particles. (b) Particles are fastened in a position by hydrogen bonds followed by the dehydration reactions, where more stable oxygen bonds are formed in a zipper-like mechanism that closes down the interparticle gap and fixes the crystals in lateral orientation.