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Who coined the term quasicrystal?
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quasicrystal
Figure 1: Hexagonal lattice of atomic sites.
The term "quasicrystal" was coined in 1984 by American physicist Paul Steinhardt and Israeli physicist Dov Levine.1
They developed the term to describe the discovery made by Daniel Shechtman, who had identified an alloy with an aperiodic structure and fivefold symmetry—a configuration previously considered impossible in crystallography. The name reflects the fact that these materials possess quasiperiodic translational order, distinguishing them from the periodic order found in ordinary crystals.12