Nucleation Of Quasicrystals Research Articles

Transition pathways connecting crystals and quasicrystals

Due to structural incommensurability, the emergence of a quasicrystal from a crystalline phase represents a challenge to computational physics. Here, the nucleation of quasicrystals is investigated by using an efficient computational method applied to a Landau free-energy functional. Specifically, transition pathways connecting different local minima of the Lifshitz-Petrich model are obtained by using the high-index saddle dynamics. Saddle points on these paths are identified as the critical nuclei of the 6-fold crystals and 12-fold quasicrystals. The results reveal that phase transitions between the crystalline and quasicrystalline phases could follow two possible pathways, corresponding to a one-stage phase transition and a two-stage phase transition involving a metastable lamellar quasicrystalline state, respectively.

Nucleation of Quasicrystals in Bulk Glass Forming Zr-Cu-Ni-Al Alloys

Nucleation of Quasicrystals in Bulk Glass Forming Zr-Cu-Ni-Al Alloys

Nucleation of Quasicrystals in Bulk Glass Forming Zr-Cu-Ni-Al Alloys

Nucleation of Quasicrystals in Bulk Glass Forming Zr-Cu-Ni-Al Alloys

Nucleation of quasicrystals by rapid cooling of a binary melt: A molecular-dynamics study.

A binary Lennard-Jones fluid was cooled in an NPT ensemble by molecular-dynamics simulations. Depending on the cooling rate, we find a sharp transition from the melt either into a disordered structure or into a phase of icosahedral long-range order. We also observed a decagonal phase.