Emergence of large-scale patterns in soft quasicrystals (opens in new tab)

We report the experimental observations of large-scale pattern formation in soft quasicrystals activated by mechanical loading. The soft material system utilizes localized transformations to give rise to large-scale organized patterns. The complex multiscale mechanisms lead to an initial loss of microscale quasicrystalline order, which ultimately reemerges in the large-scale patterns with rotational symmetry. Our experiments demonstrate that the resulting large-scale patterns can be pre-desig...