A Review of Transmission Electron Microscopy of Quasicrystals—How Are Atoms Arranged?

Author
Li, Ruitao
Li, Zhong
Dong, Zhili
Khor, Khiam Aik
Date of Issue
2016School
School of Materials Science and Engineering
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Version
Published version
Abstract
Quasicrystals (QCs) possess rotational symmetries forbidden in the conventional crystallography and lack translational symmetries. Their atoms are arranged in an ordered but non-periodic way. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was the right tool to discover such exotic materials and has always been a main technique in their studies since then. It provides the morphological and crystallographic information and images of real atomic arrangements of QCs. In this review, we summarized the achievements of the study of QCs using TEM, providing intriguing structural details of QCs unveiled by TEM analyses. The main findings on the symmetry, local atomic arrangement and chemical order of QCs are illustrated.
Subject
Quasicrystal
Transmission electron microscopy
Transmission electron microscopy
Type
Journal Article
Series/Journal Title
Crystals
Rights
© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Collections
http://doi.org/10.3390/cryst6090105
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