Five-fold symmetry in crystalline quasicrystal lattices.

Abstract

To demonstrate that crystallographic methods can be applied to index and interpret diffraction patterns from well-ordered quasicrystals that display non-crystallographic 5-fold symmetry, we have characterized the properties of a series of periodic two-dimensional lattices built from pentagons, called Fibonacci pentilings, which resemble aperiodic Penrose tilings. The computed diffraction patterns from periodic pentilings with moderate size unit cells show decagonal symmetry and are virtually indistinguishable from that of the infinite aperiodic pentiling. We identify the vertices and centers of the pentagons forming the pentiling with the positions of transition metal atoms projected on the plane perpendicular to the decagonal axis of quasicrystals whose structure is related to crystalline eta phase alloys. The characteristic length scale of the pentiling lattices, evident from the Patterson (autocorrelation) function, is approximately tau 2 times the pentagon edge length, where tau is the golden ratio. Within this distance there are a finite number of local atomic motifs whose structure can be crystallographically refined against the experimentally measured diffraction data.