Computing phase diagrams for a quasicrystal-forming patchy-particle system

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to compute free energies of quasicrystals and uses it to map phase diagrams of patchy particles, revealing the stability and entropic nature of dodecagonal quasicrystals in two dimensions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach for calculating quasicrystal free energies and demonstrates their stability in a specific patchy particle system.

Findings

Quasicrystals are thermodynamically stable over a wide range of conditions.

The quasicrystal is entropically stabilized compared to crystalline approximants.

The stability of the quasicrystal persists as potential parameters vary.

Abstract

We introduce an approach to computing the free energy of quasicrystals, which we use to calculate phase diagrams for systems of two-dimensional patchy particles with five regularly arranged patches that have previously been shown to form dodecagonal quasicrystals. We find that the quasicrystal is a thermodynamically stable phase for a wide range of conditions and remains a robust feature of the system as the potential's parameters are varied. We also demonstrate that the quasicrystal is entropically stabilised over its crystalline approximants.