Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Quasicrystals

Electrons in a strange sea

Nature volume 406, pages 571–573 (2000)Cite this article

Did you start your day using electricity — for instance, by switching on a light, turning on a computer or using a toaster? If so, you made use of the fact that electrons can move through a metal such as copper with reasonably high efficiency. This efficiency comes about because the electrons float throughout the metal in an ‘electron sea’ — another way of saying that the electronic quantum states, which describe the confinement of electrons in metals, are highly delocalized (sometimes called extended or band-like). But our understanding of the way in which electrons move in metals has just been presented with a new challenge, as described by Rotenberg et al.1 on page 602of this issue. The quandary arises from trying to understand electronic states in a special type of metallic alloy known as a quasicrystal.

Electrons cannot move with complete freedom in a metal — their motion is moderated by a number of factors, most important of which is the arrangement of atomic nuclei. Before quasicrystals were discovered, all known crystals displayed a periodic arrangement of their atoms. In other words, the structure was built up from single building blocks — the particular arrangement of atoms in a unit cell — stacked in three dimensions. Electrons moving through such an arrangement of nuclei can be described by Bloch functions, a mathematical treatment that shows how the spatial distributions of the electron energies (or momenta) reflect the symmetry of the atomic lattice.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Quasicrystals show unusual symmetry not seen in normal metallic crystals.

References

  1. Rotenberg, E., Theis, W., Horn, K. & Gille, P. Nature 406, 602–605 (2000).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Martin, S. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 719– 722 (1991).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Belin-Ferre, E. in Quasicrystals Vol. 553 (eds Dubois, J.-M. et al.) 347 (MRS Conf. Proc., Warrendale, Pennsylvania, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Janot, C. & de Boissieu, M. Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 1674–1677 (1994).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Macia, E. Phys. Rev. B 61, 8771–8777 (2000).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Pierce, F. S. et al. Phys. Rev. B 47, 5670– 5676 (1993).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Fisher, I. R. et al. Phil. Mag. B 79, 425– 434 (1999).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Ames Laboratory and the Department of Chemistry, Iowa State University, 1605 Gilman Hall, Ames, 50011, Iowa, USA

    Patricia A. Thiel

  2. the Laboratoire de Science et Génie des Matériaux Métalliques (UMR 7584 CNRS-INPL), Ecole des Mines de Nancy, Parc de Saurupt, Nancy Cedex, 54042, France

    Jean Marie Dubois

Authors
  1. Patricia A. Thiel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jean Marie Dubois
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Patricia A. Thiel or Jean Marie Dubois.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Thiel, P., Dubois, J. Electrons in a strange sea. Nature 406, 571–573 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35020657

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35020657

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing