Universal features in the electrical conductivity of icosahedral Al-transition-metal quasicrystals

Abstract

In this work we report the existence of certain universal features in the temperature dependence of the electrical conductivity of Al-transition-metal icosahedral quasicrystals, extending the results previously reported on the inverse Matthiessen rule [D. Mayou, C. Berger, F. Cyrot-Lackmann, T. Klein, and P. Lanco, Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 3915 (1993)]. We propose a tentative classification scheme providing a unified description of the electrical conductivity curves over a broad temperature range. We introduce a phenomenological model describing the electrical conductivity of icosahedral quasicrystals, deriving closed analytical expressions. We compare our analytical results with suitable experimental data and illustrate the use of the introduced phenomenological coefficient in order to extract information about the electronic structure of the samples from a fitting analysis of the experimental conductivity curves.