Atomic structure of quasicrystals

Abstract

The 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to Dan Shechtman for his discovery of quasicrystals. The discovery has indeed been a breakthrough in crystallography and solid state physics and chemistry. After a brief introduction to the subject, we review some of the recent advances in the understanding of the atomic structure of icosahedral quasicrystals and in particular for the binary Cd–Yb type quasicrystal. Thanks to a combined analysis of periodic approximant, high quality synchrotron data, and the superspace approach, a detailed insight in the crystal chemistry of this binary quasicrystal has been achieved.