Quasicrystals in Soft Matter
Tomonari Dotera
Israel Journal of Chemistry 51, 1197-1205 (2011).
2012 The most downloaded articles in Isr J. Chem.
Two decades after the first publication on quasicrystals in aluminum manganese alloys by Shechtman et al., a "soft quasicrystal" was found in nature. Since then a number of materials successively joined the family of soft quasicrystals, including liquid crystals, polymers, nanoparticles, colloids, mesoporous silica, and even water and silicon. In this article, important experimental advances are reviewed to introduce readers to the emerging research front of soft quasicrystalline materials. The world of quasicrystals opened by Daniel Shechtman extends its reach into the twenty-first century chemistry.
Archimedean tiling; colloids; core-shell particle; liquid crystals; polymers; quasicrystal; soft matter