“…Since its discovery in natural systems 2 , 3 there has been growing interest in exploiting oriented attachment to construct hierarchically structured crystalline materials. Examples include metals such as Au 7 and Ag 8 , alloys such as ZnTe 9 , Pt-Ni, Pt-Cu, and Pt-Fe 10 , 11 , metal oxides such as ZnO 12 , 13 , TiO 2 3 , MnO 14 , and α-Fe 2 O 3 15 , metal sulfides such as PbS 16 , ZnS 17 , Ag 2 S 18 , and CdS 18 , 19 , and metal selenides such as PbSe 20 , CdSe 19 , NiSe 2 21 . Furthermore, surfactants have been widely used in experiments to facilitate oriented particle assembly via preferential adsorption on crystal surfaces.…”