Expanding quasiperiodicity in soft matter: Supramolecular decagonal quasicrystals by binary giant molecule blends

Abstract

Significance As the formation of quasicrystalline ordering in both metal alloys and soft matters reinforces the scale-invariance principle, however, it remains unknown that why metallic quasicrystals prefer decagonal quasicrystalline (DQC, 10-fold) ordering, and the condensed soft maters only exhibit dodecagonal quasicrystalline (DDQC, 12-fold) ordering. By tuning the self-sorting ability in a pair of giant molecules, the well-mixed binary blends generate a metastable DQC phase and corresponding unprecedent phase sequence (DQC → DDQC → Frank–Kasper σ) during thermal annealing. These peculiar assembling behaviors result from interplays of submesoatomic and mesoatomic packings. Reducing the self-sorting strength has induced an extra complexity in the sub-mesoatomic packings of giant molecules, which further influences the clustering on the mesoatomic level.