Exploratory synthesis and characterisation in the Gd-Au-Si-system : A quest for quasicrystals

The field of crystallography has recently been expanded to include the science of quasicrystals, crystalline structures lacking unit cells and conventional periodicity. This resulted in a paradigm shift in the field, opening up for a whole new branch on the subject of structural chemistry. Despite this, not much is known about the abilities of quasicrystalline and approximant materials. Quasicrystalline approximants in the RE-Au-SM system have previously shown promising results regarding magnetic properties. To explore and discover properties like this is key to further improve the understanding of quasicrystalline materials. The scope of the project was to explore the Gd-Au-Si system with compositions theoretically calculated to yield possible quasicrystals. In three batches with varying composition ratios, crystals were synthesised, using an arc-melting self-flux method. These were then analysed with powder X-ray diffraction, single crystal X-ray diffraction and electron dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) to characterise the synthesised compounds using diffraction data and composition data respectively. The resulting crystals were determined to be of a ternary composition close to what was theoretically calculated. The phase synthesised is yet to be found in any previous work or database, possibly marking it out as a new phase, albeit the structure not being quasicrystalline in nature. Thus, the exploratory study yielded a so for unobserved composition in the Gd-Au-Si system