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Quasicrystals

Model structures

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 692–693 (2013)Cite this article

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Elucidating the relationship between the structure and magnetism of quasicrystals has long been a challenge. The discovery of an extended family of binary icosahedral quasicrystals with localized magnetic moments may be an important step in shedding light on this issue.

The counterintuitive existence of quasicrystals — materials displaying long-range structural order but at the same time lacking lattice periodicity — has fascinated scientists for the past three decades. It is fair to say their discovery1 represented a paradigm shift in crystallography and solid-state physics and chemistry2, as recognized by the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to Dan Shechtman. However, unravelling the interplay between their structure and physical properties such as their magnetism remains an ongoing challenge. Alan Goldman and colleagues now report3 in Nature Materials the discovery of a series consisting of seven binary icosahedral quasicrystals, based on cadmium and rare earths such as gadolinium, terbium and dysprosium. Furthermore, six of these structures are characterized by localized, as opposed to itinerant, magnetic moments. Therefore, in addition to significantly expanding the known class of binary icosahedral quasicrystals, this development may well make the problem of uncovering the complex relationship between the structure and magnetism of quasicrystals significantly more tractable.

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Figure 1: Binary icosahedral quasicrystal structure.
Figure 2: Position of the cluster centres in a five-fold plane of the quasicrystal.

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  1. Marc de Boissieu is at the Laboratoire SIMaP (Sciences de l'Ingénierie, des Matériaux et Procédés), 1130 rue de la piscine, BP 75, 38402 Saint Martin d'Hères Cedex, France,

    Marc de Boissieu

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  1. Marc de Boissieu
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Correspondence to Marc de Boissieu.

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de Boissieu, M. Model structures. Nature Mater 12, 692–693 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3725

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