Crystal Structures & Crystal Geometry

The Platonic Solids

Dodecahedron Icosahedron

Cube

20 faces and 12 vertices

Tetrahedron Octahedron http://home.teleport.com/~tpgettys/platonic.shtml

Christian Huygens, 1690

Snow flakes
Bentley captured more than 5000 snowflakes during his lifetime, not finding any two alike.

Caltech work

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

What I expect you to know for thi course this

Space p Lattice
Atomic arrangements in crystalline solids can be described with respect to a network of lines in three dimensions. The intersections of the lines are called lattice sites (or lattice points). Each lattice site has the same environment in the same direction.

Ap particular arrangement g of atoms in a crystal y structure can be described by specifying the atom positions in a repeating unit cell.

Lattice: regular pattern

Bravais

14 Bravais Lattices

Why y not p pentagons??? g

Principal Metal Crystal Structures There are three principle crystal structures for metals: Really important for (a) Body-centered cubic (BCC) Thi course!! This !! (b) Face-centered cubic (FCC) (c) Hexagonal close-packed (HCP)

Body-centered cubic (BCC)

BCC

Face-centered cubic (FCC) ( )

Geometry of the BCC Structure

FCC

Geometry of the FCC Structure

Hexagonal close-packed (HCP)

HCP

Geometry y of the HCP Structure

Relationships
Si Simple l cube b BCC FCC

a=2r

Directions in a crystal

Directions in a crystal y

Negative: use overbar

Example

Fraction

For cubic system y

<100> edge direction <110> face diagonal <111> body diagonal

Directions FCC

Directions BCC

Interstial spaces
It depends on the r/R ratios, ratios leading to different coordination numbers

Interstial spaces

Interstial spaces -8 8

Interstial spaces -12 12

Examples
NaCl (FCC, octahedral bonding)

Examples SiO2

Some So e Materials ate a s have a e Different e e tC Crystal ysta Structures at Different Temperatures
Many elements and compounds exist in more than one crystalline form under different conditions of temperature and pressure. This phenomenon is called polymorphism or allotropy.

Last Century work

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of "for X-rays by crystals"

Pauling
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954 "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure t t of f complex l substances" b t "

Penrose tiling

The C60 or 'Buckball' belongs to a very small set of known molecules with icosahedral symmetry

Curl, Kroto, Smalley received the Nobel prize i in i Chemistry Ch i 1996 1996.