Rectangle-triangle soft-matter quasicrystals with hexagonal symmetry

Speaker: Prof. Andrew Archer (Loughborough University)

https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/maths/staff/andrew-archer/

Title: Rectangle-triangle soft-matter quasicrystals with hexagonal symmetry

Abstract: Aperiodic (quasicrystalline) tilings, such as Penrose’s tiling, can be built up from e.g. kites and darts, squares and equilateral triangles, rhombi or shield shaped tiles and can have a variety of different symmetries. However, almost all quasicrystals occurring in soft-matter are of the dodecagonal type. In this talk I will discuss a class of aperiodic tilings with hexagonal symmetry that are based on rectangles and two types of equilateral triangles. I will show how to design soft-matter systems of particles interacting via a pair potentials containing two length-scales which form aperiodic (meta)stable states that correspond to two different examples of rectangle–triangle tilings. One of these is the bronze-mean tiling, while the other is a generalization. Our work points to how more general (beyond dodecagonal) quasicrystals can be designed in soft-matter.