What is it about?
Quasicrystals have ordered atomic patterns that never repeat periodically. Long-range ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic order has now been established in quasicrystals, which were long considered unfavorable for such ordering. This review explains recent breakthroughs in understanding magnetism in quasicrystals and related compounds, offering practical principles for tuning their magnetic behavior and guiding the discovery of new magnetic states.
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Why is it important?
For decades, magnetic quasicrystals studied experimentally exhibited predominantly spin-glass-like freezing rather than long-range magnetic order. Recent discoveries of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic order have demonstrated that quasiperiodicity is compatible with collective magnetic ordering. This review connects these breakthroughs with design principles developed through studies of periodic approximants. It provides a framework for exploring new magnetic materials and identifying how local atomic geometry, magnetic interactions and quasiperiodic organization influence their behaviour.
Perspectives
Discovering novel magnetic order in quasicrystals and their periodic approximants requires clear physical principles to guide materials exploration, which is a central aim of this review paper. Their complex atomic architectures offer structural degrees of freedom that may stabilize unconventional magnetic states. The next challenge is to determine how these magnetic states can be systematically controlled and to explore whether quasiperiodicity can stabilize forms of magnetic order that cannot occur in conventional periodic crystals. We hope that this framework will guide the discovery of new magnetic quasicrystals and open a route toward understanding magnetism unique to quasiperiodic matter.
Farid Labib
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Magnetic order in Tsai-type icosahedral quasicrystals and periodic approximants, IUCrJ, September 2026, International Union of Crystallography,
DOI: 10.1107/s2052252526006263.
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