SOLID STATE PHYSICS

Rhombohedral bravais lattice

SUBMITTED TO: DR. NAWISHTA JABEEN

SUBMITTED BY:
Saeeda Bibi

Amber Nisar

Malaika Gul

Amina Bibi

Maryam Anis

Ayeshah Fatima Khan

Aqsa Bint e Saqlain

 Rhombohedral Bravais Lattice:

Crystal:
An ideal crystal is constructed by the infinite repetition of identical groups of
atoms. A group is called the basis. The set of mathematical points to which the
basis is attached is called the lattice. The lattice in three dimensions may be
defined by three translation vectors a1, a2, a3.

Rhombohedral is one of the 14 Bravais lattice structure in 3D. In terms of crystal

structure, the category that includes Rhombohedral is trigonal crystal structure
along with hexagonal.

Symmetry:
A rotation axis of order 3 along the body-diagonal of the unit cell (shown as a dashed line)
constrains all of the sides to be of equal length and all of the angles to be equal, as shown above.
A unit cell with these axes is referred to as primitive rhombohedral.

This figure shows the rhombohedrally-centred hexagonal cell (solid lines) and its
relationship to the primitive rhombohedral cell (dotted lines); the two-middle
points on the dashed line correspond to the rhombohedral lattice centring.
Crystal Structure: Calcite III
Calcite I is trigonal-rhombohedral, R-c-3, with trigonal axes a = 4.99Å and c =
17.06Å. The structure has Ca atoms at the origin, and in layers every c/6 along c.
The planar CO3 groups are oriented perpendicular to c. The calcite structure is
made up of just three atoms, calcium (blue), carbon (brown) and oxygen (red). The
structure consists of calcium (Ca ) cations sandwiched between flat layers of
2+

carbonate (CO ) anions.

3
2-

Calcite belongs to the hexagonal Bravais lattice within the trigonal system.
Specifically, it adopts the rhombohedral Bravais lattice. The rhombohedral
lattice is characterized by a threefold rotational symmetry and a rhombohedral
unit cell shape, which is essentially a distorted cube.

Found in:

Calcite is the most common mineral form of calcium carbonate, CaCO . It is

3

commonly found in sedimentary rocks and forms the primary component of marble
as well as the shells of many marine creatures such as plankton and oysters.