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How to design an icosahedral quasicrystal through directional bondingEva G. Noya, Chak Kui Wong, Pablo Llombart and Jonathan P.K. DoyeAbstractIcosahedral quasicrystals (IQCs) are materials that exhibit long-range orientational order but lack periodicity in any direction of space. Experimentally they can be obtained for certain binary and ternary metallic alloys, but, so far, have never been observed for other materials. Here we introduce a new class of IQCs built from model patchy colloids that could be experimentally realized using DNA origami particles. Our rational design strategy leads to systems that in simulations robustly assemble into a target IQC through directional bonding and is illustrated for both body-centred and primitive IQCs with the simplest systems involving just two particle types. As well as furnishing model systems to explore the fundamental physics of IQCs, our approach provides a potential route to functional quasicrystalline materials. |