Zirconium phenylphosphonate (ZrPP) films with different crystallite orientations have been fabricated on unmodified and surface-sulfonated polystyrene (PS) substrates by an in situ hydrothermal crystallization method. On the unmodified PS substrate, a monolayer film with the hexagonal ab planes of the ZrPP crystallites parallel to the PS can be obtained by restricting the crystallization time. After a longer crystallization time, the ZrPP films adopt a bilayer arrangement, with the ab planes of the ZrPP crystallites in the lower layer being parallel to the substrate, and the ab planes of the ZrPP crystallites in the upper layer being perpendicular to the substrate. On the surface-sulfonated PS, however, the ZrPP crystallites form a monolayer film with their ab planes perpendicular to the substrate irrespective of the crystallization time. We suggest that the different interactions between the ZrPP crystallites and the two substrates, namely the pi-pi interactions between the phenyl groups in the ZrPP surface and those in the unmodified PS substrate, and the coordinate interactions between the lone pairs of electrons on oxygen atoms in the sulfonate groups on the sulfonated PS and vacant coordination sites on Zr atoms on the edges of ZrPP crystallites, are responsible for the different morphologies of the monolayer films on the unmodified and sulfonated substrates. Two distinct growth mechanisms are proposed which can satisfactorily account for the different crystallite orientations in the two ZrPP films. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.