Simulation of The Dynamics of Icosahedral Quasicrystal Clusters

This book covers the study of quasicrystal structures and their properties produced from metallic alloys. Metals and Alloys have contributed more to the development of mankind over the millennia. Throughout the centuries, studies of metals belonged to one of the oldest branches of Applied Material Sciences-Metallurgy. This changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when applications of metallic materials spread into other areas of science and technology including electronics, energy, aeronautics and space travel. Clusters are usually used to describe aggregates of atoms that are too large to be referred to as molecules and too small to resemble small pieces of crystals. Clusters generally do not have the same structure or atomic arrangement as a bulk solid. Clusters may be classified as metallic or nonmetallic according to the atoms they are made of. Quasicrystals are materials with perfect long-range order, but no three-dimensional translational periodicity. They are typically binary and tenary metallic alloys. The Mackay cluster model was used to build icosahedral shells for pure metal clusters.