Disclinations as a source of thermal resistance in icosahedral i-AlPdMn quasicrystals

We propose a model to analyse the experimental data for thermal conductivity of single-grain i-AlPdMn quasicrystals. The interpretation is based on the picture in which disclination pairs of wedge type are the main source of phonon scattering at low temperatures. The scattering of phonons due to strain fields of these dipoles is considered. Our numerical calculations show that experimentally observed thermal conductivity in a wide temperature range can be well fitted by a combination of wedge disclination dipole scattering and quasi-umklapp scattering processes