EEE 3203

LECTURE 02
REVIEW
CRYSTAL STRUCTURE

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 What You Need to Know
➢How atoms are arranged in solid materials?

➢How to analyze and classify crystal lattices?

➢Learn about the crystal structures of semiconductors.

➢How crystals and semiconductor wafers are manufactured?

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What Is Crystal Structure?
• Crystal structures come in three basic kinds...
Crystalline: repeating arrangement of atoms
Amorphous: random arrangement of atoms
Polycrystalline: has regions of crystallinity separated by grain boundaries

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 Lattice > How To Repeat?
Basis > What To Repeat?
Crystal = Lattice + Basis

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 Crystal Structure
• If atoms bonded together in a regular 3-D pattern (long range order)
they form a CRYSTAL.
• Each type of atom has a preferred arrangement depending on
temperature and pressure (most stable configuration).
• These patterns known as SPACE LATTICES.
• Each repeating unit or building block is known as the UNIT CELL.
• First define UNIT CELL then you can define location of all atoms in
crystals.
• There are 7 types of CRYSTAL SYSTEMs and 14 standard UNIT CELLs.

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Unit Cells

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Metallic Crystal Structures
Most metals crystallize into one of three densely packed structures.
➢BODY CENTERED CUBIC (BCC)
➢FACE CENTERED CUBIC (FCC)
➢HEXAGONAL CLOSE PACKED (HCP)

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 HCP STRUCTURE

• Top and bottom hexagonal planes and an extra plane in middle

• Atoms/unit cell: 12×1/6 + 2×1/2+ 3 = 6; APF = 0.74;
• Typical metals: Be, Mg, Zn
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Semiconductor Crystal Structures
• MOST semiconductors crystallize into Diamond cubic or Zinc blende
structures.

• Diamond Crystal Structure

• Diamond is a metastable allotrope of carbon where each carbon atom is
bonded covalently with other surrounding four carbon atoms and are
arranged in a variation of the face centered cubic (FCC) crystal structure
called a diamond lattice.
• It accommodates tetrahedral bonding.
• Atoms/unit cell: 4+6×1/2+8×1/8 =8; APF: 0.34;
• It is a loosely packed structure.

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 Diamond Unit Cell
• Figure shows four atoms (dark)
bonded to four others within the
volume of the cell.
• Six atoms fall on the middle of each
of the six cube faces, showing two
bonds.
• Out of eight cube corners, four
atoms bond to an atom within the
cube.
• The other four bond to adjacent
cubes of the crystal.
• Typical semiconductors: Si & Ge

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 Zinc Blende Crystal Structure
• The arrangement is basically the same
with Diamond Cubic.
• However, the successive atoms in the
crystal are from DIFFERENT chemical
elements.
• Typical semiconductors: AlAs, GaAs,
GaP, GaSb, InAs, InP, InSb, ZnS, ZnTe...

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 Crystallographic Planes & Directions
• Now that we know how atoms arrange themselves to form crystals, we need
a way to identify directions and planes of atoms.

Why?
➢Deformation under loading (slip) occurs on certain crystalline planes and in
certain crystallographic directions. Before we can predict how materials fail,
we need to know what modes of failure are more likely to occur.
➢Other properties of materials (electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity,
elastic modulus) can vary in a crystal with orientation.

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 Crystallographic Planes & Directions
It is often necessary to be able to
specify certain directions and planes in
crystals.

Many material properties and

processes vary with direction in the
crystal.

Directions and planes are described

using three integers - Miller Indices
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 General Rules for Lattice Directions, Planes & Miller Indices

• Miller indices are used to express lattice planes and directions

• x, y, z are the axes (on arbitrarily positioned origin)
• a, b, c are lattice parameters (length of unit cell along a side)
• h, k, l are the Miller indices for planes and directions - expressed as planes:
(hkl) and directions: [hkl]

• Conventions for naming

➢There are NO COMMAS between numbers
➢Negative values are expressed with a bar over the number

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 Families of Directions

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Miller Indices for Planes
• (hkl) Crystallographic plane
• {hkl} Family of crystallographic planes
e.g. (hkl), (lhk), (hlk) … etc.

• In the cubic system planes having the same indices regardless

of order or sign are equivalent

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 Crystallographic Planes

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 Classwork
➢ What is the angle between a [110] direction and a (110) plane?
➢ Determine the Miller indices for the following planes along with the directions normal to
each plane.

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 Crystalline Solids
➢ More than 90% of naturally occurring and artificially prepared solids are crystalline.

➢ Minerals, sand, clay, limestone, metals, carbon (diamond and graphite), salts ( NaCl, KCl etc.), all
have crystalline structures.

➢ A crystal is a regular, repeating arrangement of atoms or molecules.

➢ The majority of solids, including all metals, adopt a crystalline arrangement because the amount
of stabilization achieved by anchoring interactions between neighboring particles is at its
greatest when the particles adopt regular (rather than random) arrangements.

➢ In the crystalline arrangement, the particles pack efficiently together to minimize the total
intermolecular energy.

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 Crystalline Solids
The regular repeating pattern that the atoms arrange in is called the crystalline lattice.

The scanning tunneling microscope (STM) makes it possible to image the electron cloud associated
individual atoms at the surface of a material. Below is an STM image of a platinum surface showing the
regular alignment of atoms.

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 Crystal Defects
A perfect crystal, with every atom of the same type in the correct position, does not exist.

All crystals have some defects. Defects contribute to the mechanical properties of metals.

In fact, intentionally used to manipulate the mechanical properties of a material. Adding alloying elements to a
metal is one way of introducing a crystal defect.

There are basic classes of crystal defects:

point defects, which are places where an atom is missing or irregularly placed in the lattice structure.
Point defects include lattice vacancies, self-interstitial atoms, substitution impurity atoms, and interstitial
impurity atoms

linear defects, which are groups of atoms in irregular positions. Linear defects are commonly called
dislocations.

planar defects, which are interfaces between homogeneous regions of the material. Planar defects
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grain boundaries, stacking faults and external surfaces.
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 Self Study!!!

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