Atomic clusters in icosahedral F-type quasicrystals

We present a detailed study of the geometry of the atomic clusters encountered in icosahedral F-type quasicrystals using the cell decomposition of the prototypic atomic surfaces introduced several years ago for modeling i-AlCuFe. This includes an exhaustive and quantitative characterization of the geometrical features of the two major (Bergman- and Mackay-type) atomic clusters usually considered as the building blocks of these structures together with a study of the extended Bergman cluster proposed by M. Duneau (Clusters in Quasicrystals, to be published in the Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Quasicrystals, Stuttgart, Sept. 1999) as a template of self-overlapping atomic clusters describing all atoms of the structure and show that this large cluster splits into a total of ten different configurations.