Electrical discharge triggers quasicrystal formation in an eolian dune

Creators: Bindi, Luca; Pasek, Matthew A.; Ma, Chi; Hu, Jinping; Cheng, Guangming; Yao, Nan; Asimow, Paul D.; Steinhardt, Paul J.

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Abstract

We report the discovery of a dodecagonal quasicrystal Mn_(72.3)Si_(15.6)Cr_(9.7)Al_(1.8)Ni_(0.6)—composed of a periodic stacking of atomic planes with quasiperiodic translational order and 12-fold symmetry along the two directions perpendicular to the planes—accidentally formed by an electrical discharge event in an eolian dune in the Sand Hills near Hyannis, Nebraska, United States. The quasicrystal, coexisting with a cubic crystalline phase with composition Mn_(68.9)Si_(19.9)Ni_(7.6)Cr_(2.2)Al_(1.4), was found in a fulgurite consisting predominantly of fused and melted sand along with traces of melted conductor metal from a nearby downed power line. The fulgurite may have been created by a lightning strike that combined sand with material from downed power line or from electrical discharges from the downed power line alone. Extreme temperatures of at least 1,710 °C were reached, as indicated by the presence of SiO₂ glass in the sample. The dodecagonal quasicrystal is an example of a quasicrystal of any kind formed by electrical discharge, suggesting other places to search for quasicrystals on Earth or in space and for synthesizing them in the laboratory.

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© 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND). L.B. is funded by MIUR-PRIN2017, project "TEOREM—deciphering geological processes using Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial ORE Minerals," prot. 2017AK8C32 (PI: Luca Bindi); P.J.S. was supported in part by the Princeton University Innovation Fund for New Ideas in the Natural Sciences; P.D.A. was supported in part by the NSF, award 1725349. We acknowledge the use of Princeton's Imaging and Analysis Center (IAC), which is partially supported by the Princeton Center for Complex Materials (PCCM), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC; DMR-2011750). We wish to thank Chris Ballhaus for discussions of lightning in the early solar nebula and Teresa Salvatici for the help in the preparation of the polished samples. Author contributions: L.B. and P.J.S. designed research; L.B., C.M., J.H., G.C., and N.Y. performed research; L.B., M.A.P., P.D.A., and P.J.S. analyzed data; M.A.P. provided the sample and contributed to the paper; C.M., J.H., G.C., N.Y., and P.D.A. contributed to the paper; and L.B. and P.J.S. wrote the paper. Competing interest: The authors declare a competing interest. The authors have research support to disclose, L.B. is funded by MIUR-PRIN2017, project "TEOREM - deciphering geological processes using Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial ORE Minerals", prot. 2017AK8C32 (PI: Luca Bindi); P.J.S. was supported in part by the Princeton University Innovation Fund for New Ideas in the Natural Sciences; P.D.A. was supported in part by NSF, award 1725349. The authors acknowledge the use of Princeton's Imaging and Analysis Center (IAC), which is partially supported by the Princeton Center for Complex Materials (PCCM), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC; DMR-2011750).

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