Isotropic and anisotropic physical properties of quasicrystals

Since quasicrystals have positional and orientational long-range order, they are essentially anisotropic. However, the researches show that some physical properties of quasicrystals are isotropic. On the other hand, quasicrystals have additional phason degrees of freedom which can influence on their physical behaviours. To reveal the quasicrystal anisotropy, we investigate the quasicrystal elasticity and other physical properties, such as thermal expansion, piezoelectric and piezoresistance, for which one must consider the contributions of the phason field. The results indicate that: for the elastic properties, within linear phonon domain all quasicrystals are isotropic, and within nonlinear phonon domain the planar quasicrystals are still isotropic but the icosahedral quasicrystals are anisotropic. Moreover, the nonlinear elastic properties due to the coupling between phonons and phasons may reveal the anisotropic structure of QCs. For the other physical properties all quasicrystals behave like isotropic media except for piezoresistance properties of icosahedral quasicrystals due to the phason field. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006