Quasicrystals and Other Aperiodic Structures in Mineralogy

n 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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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Pina, Carlos M., López-Acevedo, Victoria
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Recursos:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/139519
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/139519
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Quasicrystals
Aperiodic mineral structures
Crystal and quasicrystal morphologies
Quasicrystalline minerals
Skutterudite
Cobaltine
Descrição
Resumo:n 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.