Quasicrystals and Other Aperiodic Structures in Mineralogy

Abstract

In 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.

Keywords

• quasicrystals
• aperiodic mineral structures
• crystal and quasicrystal morphologies
• quasicrystalline minerals
• skutterudite
• cobaltine