Aperiodic crystal

Aperiodic crystals are crystals that lack translational symmetry in at least one dimension, but still exhibit long-range order in 3 dimensions. Where as traditional crystals can be viewed by a unit cell containing some set of matter (atoms, molecules, ions, etc) repeated in 3 dimension, an aperiodic crystal has at least some feature which cannot be described in this manner, but does have some defined rule by which it is arranged such that, knowing a finite portion of the structure, you could predict the rest of the structure. They are classified into three different categories: incommensurate modulated structures, incommensurate composite structures, and quasicrystals.

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