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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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Pina Martínez, Carlos Manuel, López-Acevedo Cornejo, María Victoria
Format: article
Publication Date:2016
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repository:Docta Complutense
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/23842
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/23842
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Quasicrystals
aperiodic mineral structures
crystal and quasicrystal morphologies
quasicrystalline minerals
skutterudite
cobaltine
Cristalografía (Geología)
Mineralogía (Geología)
2506.11 Mineralogía
Description
Summary: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.