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Yes—under the conditions studied, decagonal quasicrystal grains with sufficiently close orientations merged into a single grain. A 2021 experiment observed this in an aluminium-cobalt-nickel alloy, while molecular-dynamics simulations suggested how the alignment can happen. The result points to a possible way to grow single-grain quasicrystals, but it is not a simple, universal recipe for producing flawless material.
What the 2021 experiment showed
Insung Han and colleagues watched multiple decagonal quasicrystal grains grow and collide as an Al79Co6Ni15 alloy solidified. Using synchrotron-based, time-resolved, three-dimensional x-ray tomography, they observed that grains with sufficiently close orientations could coalesce into one grain. The study was published in Nature Communications on 11 October 2021: the original paper.
For the experiment, the team cooled the alloy at 1 °C per minute from above its liquidus temperature of about 1026 °C. Those figures describe this particular alloy and experimental setup, not a general processing specification.
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The researchers used molecular-dynamics simulations to examine what happens at the boundary between colliding grains. When their initial misorientation was small, the simulated grains could rotate toward alignment rather than retain a persistent boundary. Phasons—rearrangements associated with quasicrystalline order—helped accommodate and relax strain as the grains aligned. The paper summarizes the mechanism as coalescence following rigid rotation facilitated by phasons.
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The experiment directly documented grain coalescence; the simulations investigated the atomic-scale explanation. The observation alone does not establish every detail of the simulated mechanism. As theoretical physicist Michael Widom noted in Chemistry World, “The experiment doesn’t directly prove the things that the simulations have shown.” The report also describes the work as a novel observation of this process in quasicrystals: Chemistry World’s account.
What the approximately 9.5° threshold means
In the reported molecular-dynamics simulations, the estimated critical initial seed misorientation was approximately 9.5°. It is a result for those simulation conditions, not a universal cutoff for quasicrystal grains. The authors indicate that the threshold may vary with temperature, grain size, fluid viscosity and external stress. The practical implication is qualitative: closer initial alignment made coalescence more likely in the conditions studied, but the figure should not be treated as a manufacturing rule.
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Why researchers want a single grain
Quasicrystals have long-range order but lack translational symmetry. Like other polycrystalline materials, they can contain grain boundaries where differently oriented regions meet; such boundaries can degrade material properties. Growing a single grain is therefore one route researchers may explore to avoid a persistent boundary between grains.
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Does this mean flawless quasicrystals are now easy to make?
No. “Flawless” here is best understood narrowly: the work points toward coalescing grains without leaving the grain boundary between them. It does not show that the resulting material is free of every kind of defect, nor that the process is simple to reproduce across alloys, quasicrystal types or production settings. The direct evidence is for decagonal quasicrystal grains in one Al-Co-Ni alloy experiment; the proposed mechanism and misorientation threshold come from simulations under specified conditions.
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