Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 for discovery of quasicrystals
Daniel Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 today. In 1982 he discovered 'quasicrystals' and with this he demonstrated that atoms in solids are not always arranged in repetitive patterns. The Prize will be awarded on 10 December 2011 in Stockholm.
Atoms are the building blocks of all material around us. The ordering of the atoms determines whether the substance is a gas, liquid or solid. Up until the 1980s, scientists thought that a symmetric atomic lattice was needed for solids in which a certain pattern was repeated. Yet that changed with the discovery of quasicrystals.
Using an electron microscope, Shechtman discovered that the atoms in quasicrystals form a regular pattern that cannot repeat itself. That reminded him of Arabic mosaics such as those in Granada (Spain). The distance between the atoms was found to exactly match the golden ratio, a ratio highly prevalent in nature and that is used in both mathematics and art.
With this controversial discovery, Shechtman made a fundamental contribution to solid-state physics and chemistry. Only later were quasicrystals found to have practical applications. A Swedish company discovered that in a certain type of steel, the quasicrystals function as a harness giving the material considerable strength. Scientists are currently experimenting with quasicrystals in applications such as pans and diesel motors.
A lot of research on quasicrystals has been done at FOM. Ted Janssen and Aloysio Janner led a FOM workgroup in that area in Nijmegen. Their publications from the end of the 1970s and start of the 1980s were mentioned by the The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the scientific background. In 2001, former FOM PhD researcher Eeuwe Zijlstra gained his doctorate for investigating the properties of quasicrystals (press release).
Further information
Daniel Shechtman works at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Press release from the The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences