Nanodomains due to Phason Defects at a Quasicrystal Surface

Friction and solid-solid adhesion on complex metallic alloys

“…Does bulk truncation and/or lattice reconstruction, which is virtually absent on quasicrystals, but not on simpler crystals like λ -Al 13 TM 4 [62, 63], play any role? Do surface phasons [64] interfere? Beyond the interaction between naked surfaces, which kind of response is to be expected from CMA surfaces covered by molecules like fullerenes [65] or a single element quasicrystal like the three-dimensional Pb films recently uncovered by Sharma et al [66]?…”

Growth of large-grain Ag–In–Yb icosahedral quasicrystals and approximant crystals

“…The stability of surfaces with different symmetries is an important issue in quasicrystal study. For a long time, researchers in the field of surface science tried to understand the stability of different high symmetry planes in i-QC by inspecting the step terraces on the clean surface in terms of chemistry, atomic density, and structure, which are also compared to the theoretical models [17,18]. However, the morphology of the grains of i-QC grown in meltsolution gives an intuitional proof by directly observing the natural facets.…”

Surface Characterization of Clean Gd5Ge4(010)

“…There, one particular type of terrace often contains nanodomains that exhibit the surface structure associated with one of the other terrace types [21; 22]. It is thought that the terraces with nanodomains may be in the process of transforming, at elevated temperature, into the type that is included as the nanodomain [22].…”