Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered something surprising that could change how we make strong, lightweight metal parts using 3D printing.
While studying a new type of aluminum alloy under a powerful electron microscope, materials engineer Andrew Iams noticed a strange pattern in how the atoms were arranged.
It wasn’t a normal crystal—it was something much rarer: a quasicrystal.
Quasicrystals are unique because they form patterns that never repeat, unlike regular crystals such as salt.
They were once thought to be impossible until Dan Shechtman discovered them at NIST in the 1980s, a breakthrough that later earned him a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Now, decades later, Iams and his team have found quasicrystals again—this time inside 3D-printed aluminum—and they’ve shown that these rare structures actually make the metal stronger.
The team found the quasicrystals while examining a special aluminum alloy made for 3D printing.
This process, called powder bed fusion, builds metal parts layer by layer using a laser to melt thin layers of metal powder.
It can create complex shapes that would be impossible using traditional methods. Companies like GE are already using it to make parts like airplane fuel nozzles that are lighter and more efficient.
But there’s a catch: not all metals are easy to 3D-print. Aluminum, for example, tends to crack during the process because the laser heats it to extremely high temperatures—well above its boiling point.
That’s where this new alloy comes in. In 2017, scientists found that adding zirconium to aluminum helped prevent cracking, making the alloy suitable for 3D printing.
Iams and his team wanted to understand why this new alloy was so strong.
What they found was that the quasicrystals—tiny, 20-sided shapes called icosahedrons—were playing an important role. In regular metals, atoms in neat, repeating patterns can easily slip past one another, which causes the metal to bend or break.
But the quasicrystals interrupt those patterns and stop the atoms from sliding, which makes the metal much tougher.
To confirm that what they saw were quasicrystals, Iams had to view the particles from different angles under the microscope. He needed to see a rare fivefold symmetry, along with threefold and twofold symmetries—a telltale sign of a true quasicrystal.
This discovery could help scientists create even better alloys in the future by designing them to include quasicrystals on purpose. It’s a small detail at the atomic level, but it could lead to big improvements in the strength and reliability of 3D-printed parts used in everything from cars to airplanes.
