A high magnetic field of 5 T was used to fabricate a magnetically aligned, optically anisotropic, liquid-crystalline chitin/poly(acrylic acid) composite. The aligned mesophase was fixed by photoinitiated free-radical polymerization. From an examination of polarized optical micrographs and an X-ray diffraction study, a high degree of orientation of 0.70 was observed for the composite with a higher liquid-crystalline chitin concentration (10.70 wt %); the orientation was reduced with a decreased chitin concentration at a given acrylic acid concentration. The X-ray data for the developed composite showed a uniplanar orientation for the chitin crystallites, with its molecular long axes perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.