A new binary decagonal Frank-Kasper quasicrystal phase

TL;DR

This paper presents a molecular dynamics study of a binary Lennard-Jones system that forms a stable decagonal Frank-Kasper quasicrystal, revealing its structure, stability, and relation to tiling models.

Contribution

It introduces a new binary Lennard-Jones model that naturally forms a stable decagonal quasicrystal with Frank-Kasper coordination, linking atomistic simulations to tiling models.

Findings

The quasicrystal is dominated by Frank-Kasper coordination shells.

The model exhibits high stability and low atomic jump rates.

Idealized structures can be described by triangle-rectangle and rhombus tilings.

Abstract

A structure model of atoms of two sizes, interacting with Lennard-Jones potentials and simulated by molecular dynamics, was observed to freeze into a decagonal quasicrystal dominated by Frank-Kasper coordination shells and closely related to the Henley-Elser model for icosahedral quasicrystals. Idealized structure models can be described as decorations of triangle-rectangle and rhombus tilings. Equilibrium properties of the idealized model have been determined by molecular dynamics simulations and a high stability of the model and a low jump rate of the atoms have also been observed.