IUCr 1999 Triennial Report - Commission on Aperiodic Crystals

Members of the Commission had opportunities to meet during various international conferences, the most important event being in Alpe d'Huez, France, during the Aperiodic '97 Conference which took place in August 1997. In the past three years, the Commission focused its work along three main directions: the establishment of standards for the publication of aperiodic structures; the organisation of international conferences and micro-symposia on the same topic; and, finally, the coordination of conference activities between different communities working in related fields of aperiodic structures.

The checklist for the publication of incommensurately modulated crystals appeared in Acta Cryst. [(1997). A53, 95—100]. This document, established by the Commission, was published following broad consultations with specialists in the field of incommensurate crystal structures. It contains numerous recommendations and suggestions to authors for the publication of refined structures described in the superspace group approach. This document can be consulted on the IUCr web site.

Work on the CIF dictionary of modulated structures is progressing. A version close to the final draft is already available on the web. The feedback of specialists working in the field of modulated structures will be required. Moreover, a preliminary database containing more than fifty modulated structures is currently being tested.

The Aperiodic '97 conference took place in Alpe d'Huez in August 1997. The members of the Commission participated actively in the preparation of the conference in the role of the International Advisory Board. During the conference, specialists from many different areas related to aperiodic crystal structures presented the current state of research in their respective fields of interest. The Proceedings of the conferences (edited by de Boissieu, Verger-Gaugry & Currat) have recently been published by World Scientific, Singapore (1998). The next Aperiodic conference will take place in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in 2000.

Commission members contributed actively to the organisation of many sessions devoted to aperiodic crystals in various international conferences, in particular ECM-17, ECM-18 and the Glasgow Congress.

The coordination between the organisers of the International Conference on Quasicrystals and the Commission was also successful and resulted in a better calendar of future conferences.

During the Prague ECM, a Special Interest Group (SIG) on Aperiodic Crystals was officially established as one of the first four in the European Crystallographic Association (ECA). Many Commission members participated actively in the foundation of the group and are presently members of the steering committee. A web site dedicated to this particular SIG provides useful information on the topic of aperiodic crystals. This site is maintained and constantly updated with new information.

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