Growth modes of quasicrystals

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quasicrystals grow from the melt, revealing two distinct growth modes—defect-free and phasonic flip dominated—that depend on thermodynamic conditions, with implications for experimental verification.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamical phase field crystal model to distinguish and analyze two unique growth modes of quasicrystals based on thermodynamic conditions.

Findings

Two growth modes identified: defect-free and phasonic flip dominated.

Phasonic flips create local defects and tiling-like order.

The growth modes can be experimentally verified in mesoscopic systems.

Abstract

The growth of quasicrystals, i.e., aperiodic structures with long-range order, seeded from the melt is investigated using a dynamical phase field crystal model. Depending on the thermodynamic conditions, two different growth modes are detected, namely defect-free growth of the stable quasicrystal and a mode dominated by phasonic flips which are incorporated as local defects into the grown structure such that random tiling-like ordering emerges. The latter growth mode is unique to quasicrystals and can be verified in experiments on one-component mesoscopic systems.