Archimedean-like tiling on decagonal quasicrystalline surfaces

Colloidal quasicrystals: A tale of two tiles Quasicrystals are unusual in that though aperiodic, they retain long-range crystalline order. Quasicrystalline surfaces hold tremendous interest due to their structural and chemical complexity leading to exotic properties. Mikhael et al. describe interactions between highly charged colloidal particles and a quasicrystalline surface generated through the exposure of the surface to a quasiperiodic patterned potential. They find that when the charges on the colloids are shielded, the surface acts as a template for the colloidal monolayer, which adopts order from the patterned potential to form a two-dimensional quasicrystal. But when the colloidal interactions are not shielded, transition to Archimedean tiling-like pattern occurs. In this, order is still locally commensurate with quasicrystalline structure but some of the periodicity observed when colloidal interactions dominate remains. However, over the long range, defects are now observed in a quasiperiodic pattern known as a Fibonacci chain. This is a useful colloidal model for atomic quasicrystalline systems and provides new insights into links between periodic and aperiodic crystalline order.