Modeling the electrical conductivity of icosahedral quasicrystals

Abstract

A model for the electronic structure of icosahedral quasicrystals is proposed on the basis of a number of pertinent experimental results. From this model we obtain a closed analytical expression for the electrical conductivity accurately describing the most remarkable features observed in the sigma(T) curves of high quality quasicrystals. As a convenient working example we compare the theoretical description provided by our treatment with a series of suitable experimental data for the i-AlCuRu, unveiling a relationship among the density-of-states structure, the sample stoichiometry, and the electrical conductivity of different samples at different temperature ranges.