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Quasicrystals and Other Aperiodic Structures in Mineralogy
Carlos M. Pina
Version 1
: Received: 22 October 2016 / Approved: 24 October 2016 / Online: 24 October 2016 (04:59:48 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Pina, C.M.; López-Acevedo, V. Quasicrystals and Other Aperiodic Structures in Mineralogy. Crystals 2016, 6, 137. Pina, C.M.; López-Acevedo, V. Quasicrystals and Other Aperiodic Structures in Mineralogy. Crystals 2016, 6, 137.
Journal reference: Crystals 2016, 6, 137
DOI: 10.3390/cryst6110137
Abstract
In this article, we first present and discuss eighteenth-century descriptions of minerals that contributed decisively to the development of crystallography. Remarkably, these old crystallographic descriptions included morphologies with symmetries incompatible with an internal periodic order of atoms, which, however, have been recognised to be characteristics of quasicrystals. Moreover, we also review a number of studies of minerals with aperiodic crystal structures, including recently reported natural quasicrystals of extra-terrestrial origin. Finally, we discuss the current investigations addressing the search for new quasicrystalline minerals in nature.
Subject Areas
quasicrystals; aperiodic mineral structures; crystal and quasicrystal morphologies; quasicrystalline minerals; skutterudite; cobaltine
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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