Patent ID: 8366974

Claim:
An article of manufacture comprising: a) a plurality of inorganic layers with metal ions substantially in parallel, wherein each inorganic layer has a thickness d 1 ; and b) a plurality of organic molecule layers substantially in parallel, wherein each organic molecule layer has a thickness d 2 and a plurality of molecules with a functional group that is bindable to metal ions; wherein for every pair of neighboring inorganic layers, one of the plurality of organic molecule layers is positioned in between the pair of neighboring inorganic layers to allow the functional groups of the plurality of organic molecules to bind to metal ions in the neighboring inorganic layers to form a lamellar hybrid structure with a geometric periodicity d 2 +d 1 in a range between about 2 nm and about 6 nm, and wherein d 1 and d 2 satisfy the relationship of d 1 <d 2 <3d 1 .