Quasicrystals discovered in oxides

Published in Chemistry World, 10 Oct 2013

Scientists in Germany have discovered quasiperiodic crystals, or quasicrystals, in oxide materials. The discovery suggests there could be many more quasicrystals out there, despite only a few having been found to date.

Quasicrystals are structures that have the general ordering but not the exact periodicity of ordinary crystals. Put simply, if you made a copy of a crystal’s structure in one place and then overlaid it in another, the two structures would align perfectly; the same is not true for quasicrystals. […]

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