Credit: Courtesy of Fernando Guevara Vasquez
Mathematicians and engineers at the University of Utah have teamed up to show how ultrasound waves can organize carbon particles in water into a sort of pattern that never repeats. The results, they say, could result in materials called quasicrystals with custom magnetic or electrical properties.
The research is published in Quasicrystals are interesting to study because they have properties that crystals do not have, says Fernando Guevara Vasquez, associate professor of mathematics. They have been shown to be stiffer than similar periodic or disordered materials. They can also conduct electricity, or scatter waves in ways that are different from crystals.