Nuclear magnetic resonance reveals “forbidden” symmetries in quasicrystals and related metallic alloys with giant unit cells

Peter Jeglic (1) , Martin Klanjsek (1) , Janez Dolinsek (1)

1 Solid State Physics Department

We report on measuring angular dependences of the selectively excited NMR intensity in decagonal AlNiCo quasicrystal, icosahedral AlPdMn quasicrystal and orthorhombic ξ'-AlPdMn single crystal with approximately 258 atoms in the unit cell. In all three cases we found 10-fold rotation patterns in agreement with structural properties of investigated samples. However, in orthorhombic ξ'-AlPdMn complex metallic alloy a non-perfect 10-fold symmetry was observed, which is a consequence of periodicity that strictly forbids non-crystallographic rotational symmetries. These measurements represent a starting point for testing structural models of quasicrystals and related metallic alloys with giant unit cells by means of NMR.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Peter Jeglic, Martin Klanjsek, Janez Dolinsek. Nuclear magnetic resonance reveals “forbidden” symmetries in quasicrystals and related metallic alloys with giant unit cells. Philosophical Magazine, 2007, 87 (18-21), pp.2687-2692. ⟨10.1080/14786430701355141⟩. ⟨hal-00513833⟩