Nanotechnology and Quasicrystals: From Self-Assembly to Photonic Applications

Abstract

After providing a concise overview on quasicrystals and their discovery more than a quarter of a century ago, I consider the unexpected interplay between nanotechnology and quasiperiodic crystals. Of particular relevance are efforts to fabricate artificial functional micro-or nanostructures, as well as efforts to control the selfassembly of nanostructures, where current knowledge about the possibility of having long-range order without periodicity can provide significant advantages. I discuss examples of systems ranging from artificial metamaterials for photonic applications, through self-assembled soft matter, to surface waves and optically-induced nonlinear photonic quasicrystals.

Growth Modes of Quasicrystals

“…Most of them are metallic alloys (see, e.g., [3,4]) but more recently they have also beend found in soft-matter systems that are made, e.g., by amphiphilic molecules [5], supramolecular dendritic systems [6,7], or by star block copolymers [8,9]. Such soft matter quasicrystals can provide scaffolds for photonic materials [10] and serve as well-characterized mesoporous matrices [11,12]. In general, quasicrystals occur either as defect-free structures stabilized by energy [13][14][15][16][17] or as locally disordered phases, leading to random tiling like structures, stabilized by entropy [18].…”