A review of transmission electron microscopy of quasicrystals—How are atoms arranged?

Abstract

Quasicrystals (QCs) possess rotational symmetries forbidden in the conventional crystallography and lack translational symmetries. Their atoms are arranged in an ordered but non-periodic way. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was the right tool to discover such exotic materials and has always been a main technique in their studies since then. It provides the morphological and crystallographic information and images of real atomic arrangements of QCs. In this review, we summarized the achievements of the study of QCs using TEM, providing intriguing structural details of QCs unveiled by TEM analyses. The main findings on the symmetry, local atomic arrangement and chemical order of QCs are illustrated.