Design of crystal-like aperiodic solids with selective disorder-phonon coupling.

ABSTRACT: Functional materials design normally focuses on structurally ordered systems because disorder is considered detrimental to many functional properties. Here we challenge this paradigm by showing that particular types of strongly correlated disorder can give rise to useful characteristics that are inaccessible to ordered states. A judicious combination of low-symmetry building unit and high-symmetry topological template leads to aperiodic 'procrystalline' solids that harbour this type of disorder. We identify key classes of procrystalline states together with their characteristic diffraction behaviour, and establish mappings onto known and target materials. The strongly correlated disorder found in these systems is associated with specific sets of modulation periodicities distributed through

SUBMITTER: Overy AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4742854 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature