In-situ high-pressure X-ray diffraction on the Zn6Sc 1/1 periodic cubic approximant to a quasicrystal

The Zn6Sc 1/1 cubic approximant to a quasicrystal has been studied in-situ at high pressures by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. This phase can be described as a bcc packing of Tsai-type icosahedral clusters whose center is occupied by a disordered Zn-4 tetrahedron. At ambient pressure the Zn6Sc undergoes a structural phase transition at 159 K to a monoclinic superstructure in which the Zn-4 tetrahedra are orientationally ordered along the [101] direction of the high-temperature bcc phase. In the pressure range up to 35 GPa, two new superstructures have been observed. The second phase corresponds to a four-fold pseudo cubic superstructure, i.e. a very large unit cell with a lattice parameter of about 5.5 nm. The resulting pressure-temperature phase diagram is different from that of Cd6Yb, which was reported by Watanuki et al. (2006).