Fermi surfaces and electronic transport properties of quasicrystalline approximants

We present ab initio calculations of the Fermi surfaces and of the electronic transport properties of the 1/1 and 2/1 approximants to icosahedral AlPdRe and AlPdMn quasicrystals. Our investigations are based on realistic structural models produced by a cut-and-projection method, a self-consistent tight-binding linearized muffin-tin orbital (TB-LMTO) Hamiltonian and Bloch-Boltzmann as well as Kubo-Greenwood theories for the electronic transport properties. Our results are analysed in the light of the current discussions of the character of electronic eigenstates in quasicrystals in general and of the very exotic transport properties of icosahedral AlPdRe in particular.