INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE

CRYSTAL STRUCTURES
Atoms are arranged in a repeating Atoms are arranged more or less in a
manner. Long range order / periodicity random manner. May be short range
in the structure order / periodicity in the structure

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 Unit Cell

Crystal
Solid composed of atoms
arranged in a pattern
periodic in 3-dimensions

Point Lattice – an array of points in space so arranged that

each point has identical surroundings.
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LATTICE AND UNIT CELL

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 Types of Unit Cell

If the planes in the three sets are

all equally spaced and mutually
perpendicular, the unit cell is
cubic. In this case the vectors a,
b, c are all equal and at right
angles to one another, or a = b =
c and α = β = y = 90°.

By giving special values to the axial lengths and angles, unit cells of
various shapes and various kinds of point lattices can be produced,
since the points of the lattice are located at the cell corners. It turns
out that only seven different kinds of cells are necessary to include
all the possible point lattices.
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 Bravais Lattice and type of crystals
The Bravais lattice are
the distinct lattice types
which when repeated
can fill the whole space.

The lattice can therefore

be generated by three unit
vectors, a1, a2 and a3 and a
set of integers k, l and m
so that each lattice point,
identified by a vector r,
can be obtained from:
r = k a1 + l a2 + m a3

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14 Bravais lattices

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Cubic Systems

BCC

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FCC

SC

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Polymorphism
In materials science, polymorphism is
the ability of a solid material to exist
in more than one form or crystal
structure. Polymorphism can
potentially be found in any
crystalline material including
polymers, minerals, and metals.

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WHY NOT BASE CENTERED CUBIC ??

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Atomic Packing Factor / Packing Efficiency / Packing fraction

number of atoms in the unit cell

volume of each
atom

BCC volume of unit cell

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SC

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= 0.74

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