Twenty years after the discovery of a quasicrystalline compound, the field of quasicrystals still raises interest and is continuously evolving. Quasicrystals display properties different from conventional crystals with small unit cells and present interesting potential for industrial purposes. This book offers an updated look into the field of quasicrystalline research. For example, a report on electrodeposited Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystals shows great promise for industry. It is also demonstrated that when Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystals are used as catalysts, in particular at high temperatures, such quasicrystals outperform conventional industrial catalysts. A new class of quasicrystal, based on a novel type of local order differing from previously observed Mackay- and Bergman-type quasicrystals, is featured. A detailed description of layer-by-layer growth of a Cu film on a quasicrystalline surface is also provided. Additional topics include: synthesis and structure; transport properties; electronic properties; mechanical properties; quasicrystals from metallic glasses; surfaces and coatings; and applications and hydrogen storage.

Twenty years after the discovery of a quasicrystalline compound, the field of quasicrystals still raises interest and is continuously evolving. Quasicrystals display properties different from conventional crystals with small unit cells and present interesting potential for industrial purposes. This book offers an updated look into the field of quasicrystalline research. For example, a report on electrodeposited Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystals shows great promise for industry. It is also demonstrated that when Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystals are used as catalysts, in particular at high temperatures, such quasicrystals outperform conventional industrial catalysts. A new class of quasicrystal, based on a novel type of local order differing from previously observed Mackay- and Bergman-type quasicrystals, is featured. A detailed description of layer-by-layer growth of a Cu film on a quasicrystalline surface is also provided. Additional topics include: synthesis and structure; transport properties; electronic properties; mechanical properties; quasicrystals from metallic glasses; surfaces and coatings; and applications and hydrogen storage.

The aim of this book is to acquaint the reader with what the authors regard as the most basic characteristics of quasicrystals -- structure, formation and stability, and properties -- in relationship with the applications of quasicrystalline materials. Quasicrystals are fascinating substances that form a family of specific structures with strange physical, chemical and mechanical properties as compared to those of metallic alloys. This, on the one hand, requires a generalization of the crystallographic description of solids and is still stimulating intensive research to understand the most basic properties of quasicrystals. On the other hand, these properties open the way to technological applications, demonstrated or potential, mostly regarding energy savings. This valuable book discusses those various facets of quasicrystals in six chapters, ending with the authors' own interpretation of the properties with respect to their unique structure.

A comprehensive and up-to-date review, covering the broad range of this outstanding class of materials among intermetallic alloys. Starting with metallurgy and characterization, the authors continue on to structure and mathematical modeling. They use this basis to move on to dealing with electronic, magnetic, thermal, dynamic and mechanical properties, before finally providing an insight into surfaces and thin films. The authors belong to a research program on quasicrystals, sponsored by the German Research Society and managed by Hans-Rainer Trebin, such that most of the latest results are pre.

The book provides an introduction to all aspects of the physics of quasicrystals. The chapters, each written by an expert in this field, cover quasiperiodic tilings and the modeling of the atomic structure of quasicrystals. The electronic density of states and the calculation of the electronic structure play a key role in this introduction, as does an extensive discussion of the atomic dynamics. The study of defects in quasicrystals by high resolution electron microscopy and the computer simulations of defects and fracture in decorated tilings are important subjects for the application of these aperiodic crystals.

Complex metal alloys (CMAs) comprise a huge group of largely unknown alloys and compounds, where many phases are formed with crystal structures based on giant unit cells containing atom clusters, ranging from tens of to more than thousand atoms per unit cell. In these phases, for many phenomena, the physical length scales are substantially smaller than the unit-cell dimension. Hence, these materials offer unique combinations of properties which are mutually exclusive in conventional materials, such as metallic electric conductivity combined with low thermal conductivity, good light absorption with high-temperature stability, high metallic hardness with reduced wetting by liquids, etc.This book is the second of a series of books issued yearly as a deliverable to the European Community of the School established within the European Network of Excellence CMA. Written by reputed experts in the fields of metal physics, surface physics, surface chemistry, metallurgy, and process engineering, this book brings together expertise found inside as well as outside the network to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge in CMAs.

Quasicrystals form a new state of solid matter beside the crystalline and the amorphous. The positions of the atoms are ordered, but with noncrystallographic rotational symmetries and in a nonperiodic way. The new structure induces unusual physical properties, promising interesting applications. This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review and presents most recent research results, achieved by a collaboration of physicists, chemists, material scientists and mathematicians within the Priority Programme "Quasicrystals: Structure and Physical Properties" of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Starting from metallurgy, synthesis and characterization, the authors carry on with structure and mathematical modelling. On this basis electronic, magnetic, thermal, dynamic and mechanical properties are dealt with and finally surfaces and thin films.

promoting the very notion of quasiperiodic order, and to spur its physical implications and technological capabilities. It, therefore, explores the fundamental aspects of intermetallic, photonic, and phononic quasicrystals, as well as soft-matter quasicrystals, including their intrinsic physical and structural properties. In addition, it thoroughly discusses experimental data and related theoretical approaches to explain them, extending the standard treatment given in most current solid state physics literature. It also explores exciting applications in new technological devices of quasiperiodically ordered systems, including multilayered quasiperiodic systems, along with 2D and 3D designs, whilst outlining new frontiers in quasicrystals research. This book can be used as a reader-friendly introductory text for graduate students, in addition to senior scientists and researchers coming from the fields of physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Key features: • Provides an updated and detailed introduction to the interdisciplinary field of quasicrystals in a tutorial style, considering both fundamental aspects and additional freedom degrees provided by designs based on quasiperiodically ordered materials. • Includes 50 fully worked out exercises with detailed solutions, motivating, and illustrating the different concepts and notions to provide readers with further learning opportunities. • Presents a complete compendium of the current state of the art knowledge of quasicrystalline matter, and outlines future next generation materials based on quasiperiodically ordered designs for their potential use in useful technological devices. Dr. Enrique Maciá-Barber is Professor of condensed matter physics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. His research interests include the thermoelectric properties of quasicrystals and DNA biophysics. In 2010 he received the RSEF- BBVA Foundation Excellence Physics Teaching Award. His book Aperiodic Structures in Condensed Matter: Fundamentals and Applications (CRC Press, Boca-Raton, 2009) is one of the Top Selling Physics Books according to YBP Library Services.

For many years, evidence suggested that all solid materials either possessed a periodic crystal structure as proposed by the Braggs or they were amorphous glasses with no long-range order. In the 1970s, Roger Penrose hypothesized structures (Penrose tilings) with long-range order which were not periodic. The existence of a solid phase, known as a quasicrystal, that possessed the structure of a three dimensional Penrose tiling, was demonstrated experimentally in 1984 by Dan Shechtman and colleagues. Shechtman received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery. The discovery and description of quasicrystalline materials provided the first concrete evidence that traditional crystals could be viewed as a subset of a more general category of ordered materials. This book introduces the diversity of structures that are now known to exist in solids through a consideration of quasicrystals (Part I) and the various structures of elemental carbon (Part II) and through an analysis of their relationship to conventional crystal structures. Both quasicrystals and the various allotropes of carbon are excellent examples of how our understanding of the microstructure of solids has progressed over the years beyond the concepts of traditional crystallography.