Freezing of charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions and relative stabilities of crystals and quasicrystals are studied using thermodynamic perturbation theory. Macroion interactions are modeled by effective pair potentials combining electrostatic repulsion with polymer depletion or van der Waals attraction. Comparing free energies—counterion terms included—for elementary crystals and rational approximants to icosahedral quasicrystals, parameters are identified for which one-component quasicrystals are stabilized by a compromise between packing entropy and cohesive energy.

• Received 6 March 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.469