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The quest for forbidden crystals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2018

L. Bindi  and
P. J. Steinhardt
L. Bindi*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Firenze, via La Pira 4, I-50121 Florence, Italy
P. J. Steinhardt
Affiliation:
Department of Physics & Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA
*
E-mail: luca.bindi@unifi.it
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Abstract

The world of crystallography was forced to reassess its rules about thirty years ago with the introduction of the concept of quasicrystals, solids with rotational symmetries forbidden to crystals, by Levine and Steinhardt (1984) and the discovery of the first examples in the laboratory by Shechtman et al. (1984). Since then, >100 different types of quasicrystals have been synthesized in the laboratory under carefully controlled conditions. The original theory suggested that quasicrystals can be as robust and stable as crystals, perhaps even forming under natural conditions. This thought motivated a decade-long search for a natural quasicrystal, culminating in the discovery of icosahedrite (Al63Cu24Fe13), an icosahedral quasicrystal found in a museum sample consisting of several typical rock-forming minerals combined with exotic rare metal alloy minerals like khatyrkite and cupalite. Here we briefly recount the extraordinary story of the search and discovery of the first natural quasicrystal.

Keywords

natural quasicrystalsicosahedriteAl-Cu-alloysforbidden symmetrykhatyrkite
Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical Magazine , Volume 78 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 467 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2014

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