Aperiodic Crystals: From Modulated Phases to Quasicrystals
Ted Janssen, Gervais Chapuis, and Marc de Boissieu
Abstract
Until the 1970s, all materials studied consisted of periodic arrays of unit cells, or were amorphous. In the last decades a new class of solid state matter, called aperiodic crystals, has been found. It is a long range ordered structure, but without lattice periodicity. It is found in a wide range of materials: organic and anorganic compounds, minerals (including a substantial portion of the earths crust), and metallic alloys, under various pressures and temperatures. Because of the lack of periodicity, the usual techniques for the study of structure and physical properties no longer work, and ... More
Until the 1970s, all materials studied consisted of periodic arrays of unit cells, or were amorphous. In the last decades a new class of solid state matter, called aperiodic crystals, has been found. It is a long range ordered structure, but without lattice periodicity. It is found in a wide range of materials: organic and anorganic compounds, minerals (including a substantial portion of the earths crust), and metallic alloys, under various pressures and temperatures. Because of the lack of periodicity, the usual techniques for the study of structure and physical properties no longer work, and new techniques have to be developed. This book deals with the characterization of the structure, the structure determination, and the study of the physical properties, especially dynamical and electronic properties of aperiodic crystals. The treatment is based on a description in a space with more dimensions than three, the so-called superspace. This allows us to generalise the standard crystallography and to look differently at the dynamics. The three main classes of aperiodic crystals, modulated phases, incommensurate composites, and quasicrystals are treated from a unified point of view, which stresses the similarities of the various systems.
Keywords:
solid state matter,
aperiodic crystals,
organic compounds,
anorganic compounds,
minerals,
metallic alloys,
superspace,
crystallography,
theory of condensed matter
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198567776 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2007 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198567776.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Ted Janssen, author
Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Nijmegen
Gervais Chapuis, author
Department of Physics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Marc de Boissieu, author
CNRS researcher, Laboratoire de Thermodynamique Physico Chimie Metallurgique, Grenoble
More
Less
