Quasicrystals and Other Aperiodic Structures in Mineralogy

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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Pina Martínez, Carlos Manuel, López-Acevedo Cornejo, María Victoria
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/23842
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/23842
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Quasicrystals
aperiodic mineral structures
crystal and quasicrystal morphologies
quasicrystalline minerals
skutterudite
cobaltine
Cristalografía (Geología)
Mineralogía (Geología)
2506.11 Mineralogía
Descripción
Sumario: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.