Growth modes of quasicrystals.

The growth of quasicrystals, i.e., aperiodic structures with long-range order, seeded from the melt is investigated using a dynamical phase field crystal model. Depending on the thermodynamic conditions, two different growth modes are detected, namely defect-free growth of the stable quasicrystal and a mode dominated by phasonic flips which are incorporated as local defects into the grown structure such that random tilinglike ordering emerges. The latter growth mode is unique to quasicrystals and can be verified in experiments on one-component mesoscopic systems.