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International audience; Replacing noble metal catalysts with inexpensive, environmentally harmless, active, selective and stable substitutes, is a great challenge for the chemical industry. In this paper, the noble metal-free Al5Co2(210) complex intermetallic surface is experimentally identified as active and selective for the semi-hydrogenation of butadiene. The catalyst surface structure and chemical composition are determined by experimental techniques-surface X-ray diffraction (SXRD), scanning tunneling microscopy (STM)-combined with ab initio calculations. Theoretical investigations of the adsorption properties under reaction conditions demonstrate that the surface Co atomic density drastically impacts the thermodynamic feasibility of the hydrogenation reaction, and they provide information on the reaction mechanism. This work offers insights for the rational design of Al-based catalysts for hydrocarbon hydrogenation reactions.

International audience; In order to obtain high-quality single grains of the Al-Cu-Ru icosahedral quasicrystal (iQC), suitable for a structure analysis, the crystal growth conditions with the self-flux method have been studied. The melts of the master alloys with the compositions of Al57.0+xCu39.5-xRu3.5 (x = 0, 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10) and Al62.0Cu34.0+y Ru4.0-y (y = 0, 0.5, 1.5) were held at 1150°C for 2 h, then cooled down to 800, 900, or 1000°C at a rate of −2 K/h, and subsequently retained for various durations, up to 750 h. Single grain iQCs having several millimetre-sizes, which were evaluated their quality by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), were grown throughout this study. The peak of (664004) reflection in powder XRD of the iQCs grown at 1000°C has approximately 50% narrower width than that grown at 800°C. The inhomogeneity of the compositions intra- as well as inter-grains grown at 800°C was observed. High-quality single grains with homogeneous composition could be achieved with a long-time annealing at 900°C or regardless of the annealing time at 1000°C. By changing the Al/Cu ratio of the master alloys, the composition could also be controlled for the iQCs grown at 1000°C. Single-crystal XRD experiment with synchrotron radiation on Al66.6Cu16.4Ru17.0 iQC, grown at 1000°C, resulted in the collection of 2680 independent Bragg reflections that confirms the high-quality of the sample. The phase retrieval of the diffraction data resulted successfully in obtaining the structure solution, which reveals some characteristic features of this face-centred iQC structure.

International audience

The hexagonal ZrNiAl-type (space group: P-62m) and the tetragonal Mo2FeB2-type (space group: P4/mbm) structures, which are frequently formed in the same Yb-based alloys and exhibit physical properties related to valence-fluctuation, can be regarded as approximants of a hypothetical dodecagonal quasicrystal. Using Pd-Sn-Yb system as an example, a model of quasicrystal structure has been constructed, of which 5-dimensional crystal (space group: P12/mmm, aDD=5.66 {\AA} and c=3.72 {\AA}) consists of four types of acceptance regions located at the following crystallographic sites; Yb [00000], Pd[1/3 0 1/3 0 1/2], Pd[1/3 1/3 1/3 1/3 0] and Sn[1/2 00 1/2 1/2]. In the 3-dimensional space, the quasicrystal is composed of three types of columns, of which c-projections correspond to a square, an equilateral triangle and a 3-fold hexagon. They are fragments of two known crystals, the hexagonal {\alpha}-YbPdSn and the tetragonal Yb2Pd2Sn structures. The model of the hypothetical quasicrystal may be applicable as a platform to treat in a unified manner the heavy fermion properties in the two types of Yb-based crystals., Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures

The detailed atomic structure of the binary icosahedral ScZn7.33 quasicrystal has been investigated by means of high-resolution synchrotron single-crystal X-ray diffraction and absolute scale measurements of diffuse scattering., The detailed atomic structure of the binary icosahedral (i) ScZn7.33 quasicrystal has been investigated by means of high-resolution synchrotron single-crystal X-ray diffraction and absolute scale measurements of diffuse scattering. The average atomic structure has been solved using the measured Bragg intensity data based on a six-dimensional model that is isostructural to the i-YbCd5.7 one. The structure is described with a quasiperiodic packing of large Tsai-type rhombic triacontahedron clusters and double Friauf polyhedra (DFP), both resulting from a close-packing of a large (Sc) and a small (Zn) atom. The difference in chemical composition between i-ScZn7.33 and i-YbCd5.7 was found to lie in the icosahedron shell and the DFP where in i-ScZn7.33 chemical disorder occurs on the large atom sites, which induces a significant distortion to the structure units. The intensity in reciprocal space displays a substantial amount of diffuse scattering with anisotropic distribution, located around the strong Bragg peaks, that can be fully interpreted as resulting from phason fluctuations, with a ratio of the phason elastic constants K 2/K 1 = −0.53, i.e. close to a threefold instability limit. This induces a relatively large perpendicular (or phason) Debye–Waller factor, which explains the vanishing of ‘high-Q perp’ reflections.

Despite their crystalline nature, thermoelectric clathrates exhibit a strongly reduced lattice thermal conductivity. While the reason for this unexpected behavior is known to lie in the peculiarities of the complex crystal structure and the interplay of the underlying guest-host framework, their respective roles are still not fully disentangled and understood. Our ab initio study of the most simple type-I clathrate phase, the binary compound ${\mathrm{Ba}}_{8}{\mathrm{Si}}_{46}$ and its derivatives ${\mathrm{Ba}}_{8\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Si}}_{46}$ seeks to identify these mechanisms and provides insight into their origin. Indeed, the strongly decreased lattice thermal conductivity in thermoelectric clathrates is a consequence of a reduction of the acoustic phonon bandwidth, a lowering of the acoustic phonon group velocities, and the amplification of three-phonon-scattering processes. While the complexity of the crystal structure is demonstrated not to be the leading factor, the reasons are manifold. A modified Si-Si interaction causes a first decrease of the sound velocity, whereas the presence of flat Ba modes results in an additional lowering. These modes correspond to confined Bloch states that are localized on the Ba atoms and significantly increase the scattering phase space and, together with an increased anharmonicity of the interatomic interactions, strongly affect the phonon lifetimes.

We present the refinement results of atomic structures of binary icosahedral (i) ScZn7.3, GdCd7.9, DyCd7.5 and TmCd7.3 quasicrystals (QCs) [1, 2] and the study of phason modes. Bragg peak intensities data collection has been carried out on the CRISTAL beamline at the synchrotron SOLEIL, using an incoming X-ray energies equal to 25.5 keV (Sc-Zn) and 24.2 keV (R-Cd), and a CCD camera located at 8 cm from the samples. For all iQC samples a high redundancy (average 50) has been obtained resulting in 4057 (Sc-Zn) and 4871 ~ 5130 (R-Cd) unique reflections having intensity larger than 3 sigma and internal R factors around 8 %. The atomic structures of the iQCs were solved using the measured Bragg intensity data based on a six-dimensional model that is isostructural to the i-YbCd5.7 one [3] and the refinement program named qcdiff by A. Yamamoto, resulting in R factors equal to 10.9 % (Sc-Zn) and 8.9 ~ 10.9 % (R-Cd). The resulting structures are described with a quasiperiodic packing of large Tsai-type rhombic triacontahedron clusters (RTH) and double Friauf polyhedra (DFP), both resulting from a close-packing of large (Sc, R) and small (Zn, Cd) atoms. The significant difference in alloy composition between i-ScZn7.3, i-RCd~7.9 and the ideal model of i-YbCd5.7 was found to lay mainly on the DFP where one of the two large atom site (Sc, R) is replaced by a small atom (Zn, Cd) resulting in a significant distortion of the DFP. Residual disorder with relative occupancies of Sc(R)/Zn(Cd)=80/20 was also found on the icosahedral site. This illustrates that a detailed understanding of the atomic structure can now be achieved in QCs. The stabilization mechanism for these binary iQCs and the microscopic origins to explain the phason fluctuations will be discussed in this presentation. (1) Canfield, P. C., Caudle, M. L., Ho, C. S., Kreyssig, A., Nandi, S., Kim, M. G., Lin, X., Kracher, A., Dennis, K. W., McCallum, R. W. & Goldman, A. I. (2010) Phys. Rev. B, Solution growth of a binary icosahedral quasicrystal of Sc12Zn88, 81, 020201. (2) Goldman, A. I., Kong, T., Kreyssig, A., Jesche, A., Ramazanoglu, M., Dennis, K. W., et al. (2013). Nature Materials, A family of binary magnetic icosahedral quasicrystals based on rare earths and cadmium, 12(8), 714–718. (3) Takakura, H., Gómez, C. P., Yamamoto, A., de Boissieu, M., & Tsai, A. P. (2006). Nature Materials, Atomic structure of the binary icosahedral Yb–Cd quasicrystal, 6(1), 58–63.

Icosahedral quasicrystals (i-QCs) are long-range ordered solids that show non-crystallographic symmetries such as five-fold rotations. Their detailed atomic structures are still far from completely understood, because most stable i-QCs form as ternary alloys suffering from chemical disorder. Here, we present the first detailed structure solution of i-YbCd(5.7), one of the very few stable binary i-QCs, by means of X-ray structure determination. Three building units with unique atomic decorations arrange quasiperiodically and fill the space. These also serve as building units in the periodic approximant crystals. The structure is not only chemically feasible, but also provides a seamless structural understanding of the i-YbCd(5.7) phase and its series of related i-QCs and approximant crystals, revealing hierarchic features that are of considerable physical interest.

An X-ray standing waves experiment was performed at the ID32 beam line of the ESRF on an Al–Pd–Mn quasicrystal with the X-ray beam at normal incidence. The X-ray photoemission core levels for each element were recorded to probe the surface. The drain current, i.e. the electron current from ground needed to neutralize the irradiated sample and to compensate the photoemitted electrons was also recorded as a bulk probe that integrates over all atoms of the sample. Within the two-beam approximation applied to quasicrystals, a simple analysis of this effect is proposed. This provides a direct-space illustration of the diffraction process in a quasiperiodic structure.

We have measured the electron energy losses on different Al–Pd–Mn quasicrystal surface states established by low energy electron diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Auger electron spectroscopy. On the well characterized and ordered Al–Pd–Mn quasicrystalline surfaces, the energy loss signal with an energy of incident electrons at 2 keV shows a strong peak at 16 eV and a satellite at about 33 eV. As the electron primary energy is decreased to 260 eV, an energy loss at 10.5 eV is clearly observed. A short ion bombardment (1 μA at 500 eV during 1 min) erases this loss at 10.5 eV which can be recovered by annealing at 800 K. All these observations are simply attributed to the existence of a bulk plasmon at about 16 eV and a surface plasmon at 10.5 eV. The ratio between these two energies is 1.52. This is quite close to the expected 2 from the classical plasmon model. On the crystalline partially annealed surface, a bulk plasmon is observed at about 16.5 eV. Oxygen-contaminated surface presents a bulk plasmon shifted towards higher energy of about 20 eV.

Fivefold surfaces of Al–Pd–Mn quasicrystal have been prepared under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) by sputtering and annealing above 700 K and characterized by electron diffraction, Auger spectroscopy and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (LEED, AES, XPS). X-ray reflectivity at grazing incidence reveals that an in situ temperature annealing at 900 K is necessary to irreversibly produce the signature of a flat and bulk terminated surface. Air-AFM investigations of surfaces prepared below or in the vicinity of this transformation temperature show a large scale structure in the micrometer range with high steps and parallel terraces. Terrace morphology is dominated by clusters with a typical size of about 10 nm. Nanometer steps can coexist with this cluster structure. With UHV-STM, terrace roughness based on cluster assembly is found to extend down to the nanometer scale.

Complex Metallic Alloys (CMAs) are metallic solids of high structural complexity, consisting of large numbers of atoms in their unit cells. Consequences of this structural complexity are manifold and give rise to a variety of exciting physical properties. The impact that such structural complexity may have on the lattice dynamics will be discussed. The surprising dynamical flexibility of Tsai-type clusters with the symmetry breaking central tetrahedron will be addressed for Zn6Sc, while in the Ba-Ge-Ni clathrate system the dynamics of encaged Ba guest atoms in the surrounding Ge-Ni host framework is analysed with respect to the experimentally evidenced strong reduction of lattice thermal conductivity. For both systems experimental results from neutron scattering are analyzed and interpreted on atomistic scale by means of ab initio and molecular dynamics simulations, resulting in a picture with the respective structural building blocks as the origin of the peculiarities in the dynamics.

Computer simulations of one-component three-dimensional icosahedral quasicrystals will help to understand the mechanisms that may stabilize them in experiments.

Elucidating the relationship between the structure and magnetism of quasicrystals has long been a challenge. The discovery of an extended family of binary icosahedral quasicrystals with localized magnetic moments may be an important step in shedding light on this issue.

We have studied the anchoring directions imposed on 4-n-octyl-${4}^{\ensuremath{'}}$-cyanobiphenyl (8CB) smectic-A and nematic phases by a single crystal of molybdenum disulfide $({\mathrm{MoS}}_{2}).$ Combining optical microscopy and x-ray diffraction under grazing incidence we have demonstrated the occurrence of a bistable planar anchoring. A previous study of the two-dimensional (2D) network of adsorbed 8CB molecules under the liquid crystal film allows a direct connection to be made between the interface structure and the anchoring directions, demonstrating that bistability is induced by the presence of two dipolar groups in the skeleton of the 2D network. It is demonstrated that the Landau--de Gennes theory cannot account for the observed anchoring in the nematic phase. The Landau--de Gennes free energy has to be associated with a coupling with both the surface order and the ${\mathrm{MoS}}_{2}$ substrate to explain the experimental observations. The hypothesis of a nematic layer under the liquid crystal bulk is postulated in the smectic phase.

Through the combination of three different, complementary techniques (optical microscopy, x-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy), we reveal the deformations inside thin smectic films frustrated between two interfaces imposing antagonistic anchorings. We study the model system, 4-n-octyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl (8CB) between MoS2 and air, which is characterized by the competition between homeotropic anchoring at air and planar unidirectional anchoring on the substrate, with thicknesses varying around 0.3 microm. Optical microscopy and x-ray diffraction demonstrate the continuous topology of smectic layers between the interfaces, which are stacked into periodic flattened hemicylinders. These latter are one-dimensional (1D) focal conic domains which form an optical grating in the smectic film, of a period ranging from 1 to 2.5 microm. The interpretation of our results through an energetic model, associated with the atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements, shows the presence below a critical thickness of a new type of curvature wall between neighboring hemicylinders.

A standard approach for structure solution of ordinary crystals begins with solving the phase problem. We show that a similar procedure can be taken even in the case of quasicrystals using single crystal X-ray diffraction by applying an ab initio structure determination method called the low density elimination method. The first picture of the occupation domains, which must be specified in a higher-dimensional structure determination of quasicrystals, is obtained from a phase-reconstructed density. We present six-dimensional densities determined by this method and give their interpretation for several different types of icosahedral quasicrystals.

Morphology of the fivefold symmetric quasicrystal surface of AlPdMn was investigated by x-ray reflectivity and by x-ray diffraction. X-ray experiments revealed two different morphologies depending on the surface preparation. Sputtering and annealing up to 900 K, under UHV conditions, produced a rough and facetted quasicrystal surface. These features were confirmed by atomic force microscopy and scanning tunnel microscopy measurements. We also observed that an annealing above 900 K induces a rapid and irreversible transition toward a flat surface.

Complex metallic alloys are long-range ordered materials, characterized by large unit cells, comprising several tens to thousands of atoms [1]. These complex alloys often consist of characteristic, cluster building blocks, which in many cases show icosahedral symmetry. Numerous complex phases are known, that can be described in a rather simple way as the periodic or quasi-periodic packing of such atomic clusters. The lattice dynamics of CMAs has been the subject of both theoretical and experimental investigations in view of their interesting macroscopic properties such as low thermal conductivity. In aperiodic crystals in the higher wave-vector regime, theory predicts that the lattice modes are critical: they are neither extended as in simple crystals nor localized as in disordered systems [2]. Experimentally phonons have been studied in different CMAs systems like clathrates, approximant-crystals and quasicrystals. For all of them, acoustic modes are well-defined for wave-vectors close to Brillouin zone centres, but then broaden rapidly as the result of coupling with other excitations [3]. We will present a combined experimental and atomistic simulation study of the lattice dynamics of the complex metallic alloy Al13Co4 phase [4], which is a periodic approximant of the decagonal phase. Particular attention will be paid to the differences between the periodic and `quasiperiodic' directions. Inelastic neutron scattering measurements carried out on a large, single grain on a triple-axis spectrometer will be compared to simulations, focussing on the dispersion relations and the intensity distribution of the S(Q,ω) scattering function, which is a very sensitive test of the model [3]. Simulations are performed with DFT methods and empirical, oscillating, pair potentials [5]. In addition, thermal conductivity calculations, based on the Green-Kubo method, will be compared with measurements, which show a weak anisotropy [6-7]. In this way, the structure-dynamics-properties relation for CMAs is thoroughly explored.

We present an in-situ temperature study of the atomic structure of the 1/1 Cd6Tb approximant to an icosahedral quasicrystal. It belongs to the `Tsai' type family of quasicrystal and approximants whose archetype is the well-studied Cd-Yb system[1]. Its high temperature structure can be described as a bcc packing of a large Tsai atomic cluster, whose inner shell is a disordered tetrahedron at room temperature. As for most of the Cd6RE (RE=rare earth) approximant, the Cd6Tb phase undergoes a phase transition at 190 K to a phase of lower symmetry, resulting from an ordering of the inner tetrahedron[2]. Moreover, it has been shown that this phase undergoes a magnetic phase transition below 20 K, with an antiferromagnetic ordering of the Tb moment bearing atoms. It is thus particularly important to have a detailed structural study of this phase. We have carried out a systematic in situ measurement on a single grain from room temperature down to 40K on the crystal beam line located at the Soleil synchrotron. The structural phase transition is observed at about 190K. Using different attenuation, we have collected integrated intensity in a large dynamical range, leading to more than 60000 unique reflections in the C2/c monoclinic low temperature phase. The final wR2 values for room temperature and 40K are equal to 0.0726 and 0.0905 respectively. The resulting atomic structure will be compared to the well-studied approximant Zn6Sc, which is isostructural to Cd6Tb[3]. The ordering of the innermost tetrahedron leads to the distortion of the successive shells. The evolution of the high temperature phase, in particular just above Tc where pretransitional diffuse scattering is observed will be presented.

The atomic structure of the matter can be studied by means of diffraction techniques, such as electron, x-ray, and neutron diffraction (Baruchel et al. 1993, Janot 1994). Indeed, the diffraction pattern of a given system depends directly on its structure. In a very schematic way Fig.4.1 shows general results expected for a gas, liquid, amorphous solid, and crystals. Each pattern of the distribution of intensities is characteristic of the different systems, and thus information on the structure can be obtained from the analysis of these diffraction spectra. In the case of periodic crystals, the structure determination is now a routine task, even for complex structures, owing to the application of direct methods.

International audience; Using in situ x-ray scattering and synchrotron radiation, we have experimentally elucidated the mechanism of the cubic to monoclinic phase transition in the Zn6Sc 1/1 approximant to an icosahedral quasicrystal. The high-temperature cubic phase is described as a bcc packing of a large Tsai-type icosahedral cluster whose center is occupied by an orientationally disordered Zn-4 tetrahedron. A clear monoclinic distortion has been found to take place within 2 K around T-c = 157 K, in excellent agreement with the observed anomalies in the electrical resistivity and heat capacity. Also, a rapid variation of the super-structure reflection intensity is observed. The low-temperature monoclinic phase, as determined by single-crystal x-ray diffraction at 40 K, has been confirmed to consist of ordered Zn-4 tetrahedra, oriented in an anti-parallel way along the [(1) over bar 01] direction. Above T-c, a diffuse scattering signal is observed at the position of the super-structure reflections, which evidences that a short-range ordering of the Zn-4 tetrahedra takes place. In a way similar to a second-order phase transition, the correlation length describing this short-range ordering increases rapidly when the temperature diminishes and almost diverges when the temperature is close to T-c, going from 200 angstrom at 220 K to reach the very large value of 1200 angstrom at 161 K. Finally, using single-crystal x-ray diffraction, the atomic structure of the low-temperature monoclinic super-structure (space group C2/c) could be solved. The ordering of the Zn-4 tetrahedra is accompanied by a strong distortion of the surrounding shells

We have studied by x-ray diffraction the deformations of thin smectic films induced by antagonistic anchorings, as a function of thickness and temperature. The structure of the cores is revealed for thicknesses of the order of 0.15 μm when the deformations are dominated by the presence of the focal conics cores. In a cylindrical geometry imposed by the unidirectional anchoring on the substrate, the cores are tube-shaped rotating grain boundaries (RGB). The spatial extension is of the order of 0.14 × 0.22 μm2, larger than the ones usually proposed in the literature. A drastic evolution of the x-ray scans with temperature is also revealed. It corresponds to a variation of the location of the RGB and is analyzed as the result of a weak variation of the 8CB/air surface tension with temperature.