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    The Discovery of Quasi-Periodic Materials: Dan Shechtman

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    This document discusses the discovery of quasi-periodic materials by Dan Shechtman in the 1980s. It describes how prior to 1982, all known crystal structures were assumed to have periodic arrangements and obey rotational symmetries of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6-fold. In 1982, Shechtman discovered an aluminum-manganese alloy that exhibited an icosahedral quasi-crystalline structure with non-periodic arrangement and 5-fold rotational symmetry. This challenged the existing definition of crystals and required redefining crystals to include quasi-periodic structures. The discovery was initially rejected by peer reviewers but was later accepted, revolutionizing the field of crystallography.

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    The Discovery of Quasi-Periodic Materials: Dan Shechtman

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    sanjayp25
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    This document discusses the discovery of quasi-periodic materials by Dan Shechtman in the 1980s. It describes how prior to 1982, all known crystal structures were assumed to have periodic arrangements and obey rotational symmetries of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6-fold. In 1982, Shechtman discovered an aluminum-manganese alloy that exhibited an icosahedral quasi-crystalline structure with non-periodic arrangement and 5-fold rotational symmetry. This challenged the existing definition of crystals and required redefining crystals to include quasi-periodic structures. The discovery was initially rejected by peer reviewers but was later accepted, revolutionizing the field of crystallography.

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    Quasi Crystal

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    This document discusses the discovery of quasi-periodic materials by Dan Shechtman in the 1980s. It describes how prior to 1982, all known crystal structures were assumed to have periodic arrangements and obey rotational symmetries of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6-fold. In 1982, Shechtman discovered an aluminum-manganese alloy that exhibited an icosahedral quasi-crystalline structure with non-periodic arrangement and 5-fold rotational symmetry. This challenged the existing definition of crystals and required redefining crystals to include quasi-periodic structures. The discovery was initially rejected by peer reviewers but was later accepted, revolutionizing the field of crystallography.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    255 views40 pages

    The Discovery of Quasi-Periodic Materials: Dan Shechtman

    Uploaded by

    sanjayp25
    This document discusses the discovery of quasi-periodic materials by Dan Shechtman in the 1980s. It describes how prior to 1982, all known crystal structures were assumed to have periodic arrangements and obey rotational symmetries of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6-fold. In 1982, Shechtman discovered an aluminum-manganese alloy that exhibited an icosahedral quasi-crystalline structure with non-periodic arrangement and 5-fold rotational symmetry. This challenged the existing definition of crystals and required redefining crystals to include quasi-periodic structures. The discovery was initially rejected by peer reviewers but was later accepted, revolutionizing the field of crystallography.

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    of 40

    The Discovery of Quasi-Periodic Materials

    Dan Shechtman
    Technion, Haifa, Israel and ISU, Iowa, USA

    Surprising Discoveries on the Structure of matter and its properties in the Mid-1980s

    Quasi-Periodic Crystals
    (1984) Dan Shechtman Ilan Blech, Denis Gratias and John Cahn

    (1985) Herold Kroto, JR Heath, SC Obrian, Robert Curl And Richard Smalley

    Fullerens

    High Temperature Superconductivity


    (1986) Georg Bednorz And Alex Muller

    Order, periodicity and rotational symmetry


    Four-fold rotational symmetry

    Rotational Symmetry
    An image has Rotational Symmetry if there is a center point around which the object is turned a certain number of degrees and the object still looks the same, ie it matches itself a number of times while it is being rotated.

    Two-fold

    Three-fold

    Five-fold

    Six-fold

    Crystallography
    Modern crystallography started in 1912 with the seminal work of von Laue who performed the first x-ray diffraction experiment. The crystals von Laue studied were ordered and periodic, and all the hundreds of thousands crystals studied during the 70 years from 1912 till 1982 were found to be ordered and periodic. Based on these observation, a paradigm was created that all crystals are periodic and the following definitions of crystal was accepted by the community of crystallographers and by the scientific community in general.

    Crystal definition till 1991 A crystal may be defined as:


    A solid composed of atoms arranged in a pattern periodic in three dimensions
    X-ray Diffraction, Culity 1959

    Atoms in a crystal are arranged in a pattern that repeats itself in three dimensions throughout the interior of the crystal
    Structure of Metals Barrett and Massalski, 1966

    Crystallography in 1982

    Crystallography in 1982

    Atoms in diamond periodic order

    The order of carbon atoms in diamond is periodic. The allowed rotational symmetries are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. 5-fold rotational symmetry as well as any other symmetry beyond 6 is forbidden in periodic structures.

    A diffraction pattern from a periodic crystal is characterized by:


    Periodicity of diffraction peaks in the reciprocal Space Rotational symmetries: 1,2,3,4 and 6-fold No 5-fold rotational symmetry and nothing beyond 6-fold

    A new definition for Crystal


    By crystal we mean any solid having an essentially discrete diffraction diagram, and by aperiodic crystal we mean any crystal in which three dimensional lattice periodicity can be considered to be absent.
    Reference: International Union of Crystallography, Report of the executive Committee for 1991, Acta Cryst. A48 (1992) 922-946

    1982 the 70th birthday of crystallography

    The year Quasi-periodic Crystals were discovered

    Shechtmans NBS TEM logbook records of the first observation of 10 (5)-fold symmetry

    The first view of the Icosahedral Phase

    10-fold electron diffraction pattern


    Electron diffraction from the Icosahedral Phase has five-fold rotational axes and it is not periodic. The ratio of distances between the central spot and other spots is the Fibonacci Number or known also as the Golden Mean.

    1+ 5 = 1.618... 2

    TEM diffraction from the Icosahedral phase

    Pseudo five-fold symmetry

    Ten twins in an Fe-Al lintermetallic compound. Each twin diffracts like a single crystal, but superposition of all ten patterns results in a pseudo five fold rotational symmetry.

    Pseudo five-fold rotational symmetry in an electron diffraction pattern taken from a twinned Al-Fe periodic crystal. The pattern is similar to a combination of patterns taken from 10 twinned single crystals The identical patterns are rotated 72 degrees to one another.

    Dark field experiments


    A set of four dark field images shows that the same region is illuminated in all four.

    No twins or other types type boundaries can be seen at the resolution of the images.

    Micro-diffraction experiment
    A micro-diffraction pattern taken from a single QC grain. The size of the convergent beam spot on the specimen was about 40 nm. If there are twins or particles in this grain, They must be smaller than the size of the beam.

    Atomic arrangement in the Icosahedral Phase

    Atomic resolution TEM image of Icosahedral quasi-periodic crystal

    The Shechtman-Blech article was rejected by JAP in September 1984. I then submitted it to Met. Trans. on October 2, 1984. The article was accepted and published in June, 1985 The article includes the crystallographic information of the Icosahedral phase, and a model that explains the structure, including simulations of the reciprocal space of the model and comparison of the simulations with the observed diffraction patterns obtained from the Icosahedral phase.

    In September 1984 I gave the Shechtman-Blech article to John Cahn who was on his way to Santa Barbara. Upon Johns return we had a conversation about the article and John suggested to bring Denis Gratias to NBS for discussion. Denis came to NBS for several days and the three of us composed a focused article based on the 1982 TEM observations and analysis.

    A week or so later we sent the article to Phys. Rev. Lett. The article was received on October 9 and published a month later, on November 12, 1984

    Icosahedral symmetry
    Many of the quasi-periodic crystals have Icosahedral symmetry With: 6 five-fold exes 10 three-fold axes and 15 two-fold axes
    The Icosahedron

    The main rotational symmetries of the Icosahedron

    1982 1987 Years of rejection

    - - "

    Professor Linus Pauling


    The main objection to the quasiperiodic nature of QCs came from Professor Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling (February 28, 1901August 19, 1994), was a distinguished American chemist, two time Nobel Laureate. During the last decade of his life he tried to prove that QCs are really just twinned periodic crystals. He did that by proposing larger ad larger periodic unit cells. All his models were proven wrong. At the end of his life he remained the only prominent opponent to quasiperiodicity in crystals.

    As large single QCs became available, so did x-ray diffraction patterns. X-ray transmission Loue photograph of i-ZnMgHo QC
    Curtsey: An-Pang Tsai Mo radiation 40kV-50mA

    It is this x-ray diffraction pattern that convinced the community of crystallographers that 5-fold symmetry can exist in crystals. This became available only in 1987. Only electron diffraction patterns were taken before that time.

    Penrose tiles

    A quasi-periodic crystal of the system Mg-Zn-Ce

    Icosahedral QCs in an Al-Mn alloy

    SEM image by An-Pang Tsai

    Order Periodicity

    Order Periodicity and Quasi-periodicity

    Why QCs were never discovered before 1982?

    Are they very rare? Are they not stable? Are they difficult to make?

    Are QCs rare? QCs are not rare there are hundreds of them.

    Are QCs not stable?


    Many are, and transform to periodic structures at high temperatures, but QCs can be thermodynamically Stable. Examples are -

    Al-Li-Cu Mg-Zn-Ga Mg-Pd-Al Al-Cu-(Fe, Ru, Os) Al-Pd-(Mg, Re)

    Most of these stable QCs were discovered by An Pang Tsai and his coworkers at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Zn-Mg-RE Cd-(Ca, Yb)

    Are QCs difficult to make?


    Not at all, QCs are easy to make QCs can be made by many manufacturing technologies
    Casting Rapid solidification Single crystal growth Electrodeposition CVD PVD

    So, why QCs were never discovered before 1982?

    1. TEM 2. Professionalism 3. Tenacity 4. Believing in yourself 5. Courage

    Thank you

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