2.1 Macrolattices, nanofabrication, polyelectrolyte-surfactant complexes

Macrolattices are long-range ordered superstructures with periods in the nanometer to micrometer scale, observed e.g. in block copolymers, microemulsions, polyelectrolyte-surfactant complexes, etc. They often form spontaneously or with a little help through self-assembly and can have interesting mechanical, optical or electrical properties [78]. Small-angle x-ray scattering (saxs) is the ideal tool to investigate these structures, establishing a larger length scale counterpart to classical crystallography

Figure 1: Typical macrolattices [79]: (a) lamellae, (b) hex. close-packed cylinders, (c) body-centered cubic, (d) face-centered cubic, (e) hex. close-packed spheres, (f) double gyroid, (g) double diamond, (h) Pm3n cubic network.

with scattering functions consisting of more-or-less sharp peaks. In addition to packings of spherical micelles, equivalent to packings of atoms, there are also lower dimensional structures (lamellae, cylinders) or bicontinuous partitions which have no direct analogue on an atomic scale, figure 1. The limited number of reflections typically observable due to lattice distortions and small domain sizes makes the structure determination problem often quote challenging, although under