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Nature 452, 43-44 (6 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/452043a; Published online 5 March 2008

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Solid-state physics: How does your quasicrystal grow?

Paul J. Steinhardt1

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Somewhere between the amorphous glasses and the rigidly regimented periodic crystals lie the quasicrystals: ordered, predictable, yet non-periodic arrangements of atoms. How do these strange structures form?

Just as it's easy to construct a mosaic of square tiles simply by adding tiles one at a time, so it's little trouble for atoms to arrange themselves into an analogous, perfectly periodic pattern: a crystal. The rules for constructing another class of mosaic — a quasicrystal — seem to be much more complex.

  1. Paul J. Steinhardt is in the Department of Physics and the Center for Theoretical Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544-0708, USA.
    Email: steinh@princeton.edu

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