CRYSTAL STRUCTURE
[Link]
Associate Professor of Physics
National College
Tiruchirappalli
Classification of Matter
Solids
Solids are again classified in to two types
Crystalline
Non-Crystalline (Amorphous)
What is a Crystalline solid?
A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material, whose
constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an
orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial
dimensions.
So a crystal is characterized by regular arrangement of
atoms or molecules
Examples !
Non-Metallic crystals:
Ice, Carbon, Diamond, Nacl, KCl etc…
Metallic Crystals:
Copper, Silver, Aluminium, Tungsten, Magnesium
etc…
Crystalline Solid
Single crystal
Single Crystal example
Amorphous Solid
Amorphous (Non-crystalline) Solid is composed of
randomly orientated atoms , ions, or molecules that do not
form defined patterns or lattice structures.
Amorphous materials have order only within a few atomic or
molecular dimensions.
Amorphous materials do not have any long-range
order, but they have varying degrees of short-range
order.
Examples to amorphous materials include
amorphous silicon, plastics, and glasses.
Amorphous silicon can be used in solar cells and thin
film transistors.
Non-crystalline
What are the Crystal properties?
o Crystals have sharp melting points
o They have long range positional order
o Crystals are anisotropic
(Properties change depending on the
direction)
o Crystals exhibit Birefringence
o Some crystals exhibit piezoelectric effect
& Ferroelectric effect etc…also
What is Space lattice ?
An infinite array of points
in space, y
Each point has identical
B C D E
surroundings to all b α
others.
O a A x
Arrays are arranged
exactly in a periodic
manner.
Translational Lattice Vectors – 2D
A space lattice is a set of points
such that a translation from any
point in the lattice by a vector;
R=la+mb
locates an exactly equivalent
point, i.e. a point with the same
environment as P . This is
translational symmetry. The
vectors a, b are known as lattice
vectors and (l,m) is a pair of
integers whose values depend on
the lattice point.
For a three dimensional lattice
R = la + mb +nc
Here a, b and c are non co-planar vectors
The choice of lattice vectors is not unique. Thus one could
equally well take the vectors a, b and c as a lattice vectors.
Basis & Unit cell
A group of atoms or molecules identical in
composition is called the basis
or
A group of atoms which describe crystal structure
Unit Cell
The smallest component of the crystal (group of
atoms, ions or molecules), which when stacked
together with pure translational repetition reproduces
the whole crystal.
S
S
S S
a
2D Unit Cell example -(NaCl)
Choice of origin is arbitrary - lattice points need not be atoms -
but unit cell size should always be the same.
This is also a unit cell -
it doesn’t matter if you start from Na or Cl
This is NOT a unit cell even though they are all the same -
empty space is not allowed!
In 2Dimensional space this is a unit cell
but in 3 dimensional space it is NOT
Now Crystal structure !!
Crystal structure can be obtained by attaching atoms, groups of atoms or
molecules which are called basis (motif) to the lattice sides of the lattice point.
Crystal lattice + basis = Crystal structure
1.1 Periodic Array of Atoms
Crystals are composed of a periodic array of
atoms:
The structure of all crystals can be described in
terms of a lattice, with a group of atoms attached
to each lattice point called basis:
basis + lattice = crystal structure
+ =
The unit cell and,
consequently, the
entire lattice, is
uniquely determined
by the six lattice
constants: a, b, c, α,
β and γ. These six
parameters are also
called as basic lattice
parameters.
Primitive cell
The unit cell formed by the primitives a,b and c is called
primitive cell. A primitive cell will have only one lattice point. If
there are two are more lattice points it is not considered as a
primitive cell.
As most of the unit cells of various crystal lattice contains two
are more lattice points, its not necessary that every unit cell is
primitive.
Crystal systems
We know that a three dimensional space lattice is
generated by repeated translation of three non-coplanar
vectors a, b, c. Based on the lattice parameters we can
have 7 popular crystal systems shown in the table
Table-1
Crystal system Unit vector Angles
Cubic a= b=c α =β =√=90
Tetragonal a = b≠ c α =β =√=90
Orthorhombic a≠b≠c α =β =√=90
Monoclinic a≠b≠c α =β =90
≠√
Triclinic a≠b≠c α ≠ β ≠√
≠90
Trigonal a= b=c α =β =√≠90
Hexagonal a= b ≠ c α =β=90
Bravais lattices
In 1850, M. A. Bravais showed that identical points can
be arranged spatially to produce 14 types of regular
pattern. These 14 space lattices are known as ‘Bravais
lattices’.
14 Bravais lattices
[Link] Crystal Type Bravais Symbol
lattices
1 Cubic Simple P
2 Body centred I
3 Face centred F
4 Tetragonal Simple P
5 Body centred I
6 Orthorhombic Simple P
7 Base centred C
8 Body I
centred
9 Face F
centred
10 Monoclinic Simple P
11 Base C
centred
12 Triclinic Simple P
13 Trigonal Simple P
14 Hexgonal Simple P