Adding a third partner to a family can lead to a number of new structural arrangements. We observed this in the world of Chemistry that upon adding the noble metal Pt to Sn and Nd a plethora of new compounds form. Hopefully this is a way for selective property tuning of materials.
Read the full study here: The Prolific Ternary System Pt/Sn/Nd: Insertion of Pt into the Structures of Sn/Nd Intermetallics Yields Structural Complexity and Wealth