Structure Refinement of the Icosahedral AlPdMn Quasicrystal Using Quantitative CBED

0　IntroductionQuasicrystals are a form of matter that differs fromother two forms, crystalline and amorphous, bypossessing a quasiperiodic translational order and a non crystallographic orientational order. The atomic structureof quasicrystals is now mostly understood by means ofhigh dimensional crystallography. In this scheme the pe riodicity is recovered in a six dimensional (6D) space forstructures presenting icosahedral symmetry. The periodicspace decomposes into two subspaces: the pa…

Structure Refinement of the Icosahedral AlPdMn Quasicrystal Using Quantitative CBED

The atomic structure of the perfect AlPdMn icosahedral phase has been studied on a single crystal specimen by quantitative convergent beam electron diffraction (QCBED) technique in combination with describing the shape of atomic surface by symmetry\|adapted series of surface harmonics. The spherical model was used as the starting model for the refinement. By fitting the calculated electron diffraction intensities to the experimental line scan profile, the coefficients in the surface harmonics expansion of the boundaries of atomic surface are refined. The refined parameters show that the fluctuations of the external boundary of atomic surface for Pd at n 0 can be as large as 0.2 nm. The boundaries of atomic surfaces for Mn show little fluctuation. In the present model, the number of unphysically short interatomic distances is significantly reduced in comparison with the spherical model.