Special issue “Deciphering the complexity of mineral structures”

Mineral structures have always represented a treasure trove for new discoveries in crystallography. For example, in the field of aperiodic crystallography, the mineral calaverite (Au1−xAgxTe2, with 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.33) was an ideal case to begin to shed light on incommensurability in crystals. Later, mineralogy played an important role with numerous examples of mineral structures exhibiting non-commensurate (misfit) layer structures, currently known under the name of composite structures, and in providing the first example of a (billion years old) natural quasicrystal, which settled any doubt that could remain on the long-term stability of quasicrystals.