A columnar liquid quasicrystal with a honeycomb structure that consists of triangular, square and trapezoidal cells

DOI: 10.1038/s41557-023-01166-5

Authors: Xiangbing Zeng (University of Sheffield) , Benjamin Glettner (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) , Ute Baumeister (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) , Bin Chen (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) , Goran Ungar (University of Sheffield; Xi’an Jiaotong University) , Feng Liu (Xi’an Jiaotong University) , Carsten Tschierske (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Nature Chemistry , VOL 53

State: Published (Approved)
Published: March 2023

Abstract: Quasicrystals are intriguing structures that have long-range positional correlations but no periodicity in real space, and typically with rotational symmetries that are ‘forbidden’ in conventional periodic crystals. Here, we present a two-dimensional columnar liquid quasicrystal with dodecagonal symmetry. Unlike previous dodecagonal quasicrystals based on random tiling, a honeycomb structure based on a strictly quasiperiodic tessellation of tiles is observed. The structure consists of dodecagonal clusters made up of triangular, square and trapezoidal cells that are optimal for local packing. To maximize the presence of such dodecagonal clusters, the system abandons periodicity but adopts a quasiperiodic structure that follows strict packing rules. The stability of random-tiling dodecagonal quasicrystals is often attributed to the entropy of disordering when strict tiling rules are broken, at the sacrifice of the long-range positional order. However, our results demonstrate that quasicrystal stability may rest on energy minimization alone, or with only minimal entropic intervention.

Subject Areas: Materials, Chemistry


Instruments: I22-Small angle scattering & Diffraction

Other Facilities: XMaS beamline (BM28) at ESRF; BL40B2 at Spring-8

Added On: 29/03/2023 15:31

Discipline Tags:

Chemistry Materials Science

Technical Tags:

Scattering Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS)