Metallic-mean quasicrystals as aperiodic approximants of periodic crystals.

Ever since the discovery of quasicrystals, periodic approximants of these aperiodic structures constitute a very useful experimental and theoretical device. Characterized by packing motifs typical for quasicrystals arranged in large unit cells, these approximants bridge the gap between periodic and aperiodic positional order. Here we propose a class of sequences of 2-D quasicrystals that consist of increasingly larger periodic domains and are marked by an ever more pronounced periodicity, thereby representing aperiodic approximants of a periodic crystal.