Toward an innovation of materials science in hyper space
In classical crystallography, crystals have a structure in which atoms are arranged periodically.
In 1984, however, Shechtman et al. reported 5-fold rotational symmetry without translational symmetry in a Bragg reflection image of a rapidly-quenched Al-Mn alloy. The finding indicates that there is a solid-state other than crystals and amorphous solids where atoms are aligned in a quasiperiodic manner. The quasicrystal structure can be explained as a cross-sectional structure of a high-dimensional periodic crystal, with another extra "complementary space" required to describe the atomic structure.
This project aims at establishing a new concept of substances, "hypermaterial", which is a high-level concept that includes the existing concept for substances, and also at creating a new theory that incorporates the concept of hypermaterial.
