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How to design an icosahedral quasicrystal through directional bondingEva G. Noya, Chak Kui Wong, Pablo Llombart and Jonathan P.K. DoyeNature 596, 367-371 (2021)AbstractIcosahedral quasicrystals (IQCs) are materials that exhibit long-range order but lack periodicity in any direction in space. Although icosahedral quasicrystal (IQCs) were the first reported quasicrystals (QCs) in Shechtman's groundbreaking 1984 paper, they have only been experimentally observed in metallic alloys and never for other materials. By contrast, QCs with other symmetries (particularly dodecagonal) have now been found in a growing number of soft-matter systems. 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. The key design feature is that the geometry of the interparticle interactions favours the propagation of an icosahedral network of bonds even though this leads to many particles not being fully bonded. As well as furnishing model systems to explore the fundamental physics of IQCs, our approach provides a potential route to functional quasicrystalline materials.The full paper is available from Nature. The paper has also been featured in a blog post on the Oxford University news web-site, and on a Behind the Paper post on the Nature Portfolio Chemistry Community. |