Nanocrystal synthesis. The zirconia nanocrystals were synthesized according to Garnweitner et al. Briefly, Zr(OiPr) 4 (6.6g, 17 mmol) was mixed with benzylalcohol (60 mL, 580 mmol) in a Parr bomb inside a nitrogen filled glovebox. Afterwards, the autoclave was heated for 48h at 210°C. After reaction a white powder was obtained via centrifugation. This was washed with diethyl ether. The white solid is dispersed in 40 mL toluene and divided over 4 centrifuge tubes (10 mL each). To each centrifuge tube oleic acid was added (600 µL, 1.9 mmol) to functionalize the nanocrystal surface and the centrifuge tubes were stirred and sonicated for 30 minutes. This procedure resulted in a transparent solution of nanocrystals, with a few insolubles. The insolubles were removed by centrifugation and the soluble nanocrystals in the supernatant were collected and purified via precipitation/redissolving cycles; the nanocrystals in 5 mL toluene (in each tube) are precipitated by adding 15 mL acetone to each tube. The nanocrystals were obtained as a white solid with a yield of 43 %. Analysis of synchrotron X-ray total scattering data. Raw 2D data were corrected for geometrical effects and polarization, then azimuthally integrated to produce 1D scattering intensities versus the magnitude of the momentum transfer Q (where Q = 4πsinθ/λ for elastic scattering) using pyFAI and xpdtools. The program xPDFsuite with PDFgetX3 was used to perform the background subtraction, further corrections, and normalization to obtain the reduced total scattering structure function F(Q), and Fourier transformation to obtain the pair distribution function (PDF), G(r). For data reduction, the following parameters were used after proper background subtraction: Qmin = 0.8 Å-1 , Qmax = 22 Å-1 , Rpoly = 0.9 Å. Modeling and fitting were carried out using Diffpy-CMI. The exponentially dampening sine-wave contribution was calculated according to the following equation.