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Unit cell definition using parallelepiped with lengths a, b, c and angles between the sides given by α, β, γ [1]. A lattice constant or lattice parameter is one of the physical dimensions and angles that determine the geometry of the unit cells in a crystal lattice, and is proportional to the distance between atoms in the crystal.
The lengths of principal axes/edges, of unit cell and angles between them are lattice constants, also called lattice parameters or cell parameters. The symmetry properties of crystal are described by the concept of space groups. [1] All possible symmetric arrangements of particles in three-dimensional space may be described by 230 space groups.
A primitive cell is a unit cell that contains exactly one lattice point. For unit cells generally, lattice points that are shared by n cells are counted as 1 / n of the lattice points contained in each of those cells; so for example a primitive unit cell in three dimensions which has lattice points only at its eight vertices is considered to contain 1 / 8 of each of them. [3]
[6]: 744 Below each diagram is the Pearson symbol for that Bravais lattice. Note: In the unit cell diagrams in the following table all the lattice points on the cell boundary (corners and faces) are shown; however, not all of these lattice points technically belong to the given unit cell. This can be seen by imagining moving the unit cell ...
However, in real materials there are deviations from this in some metals where the unit cell is distorted in one direction but the structure still retains the hcp space group—remarkable all the elements have a ratio of lattice parameters c/a < 1.633 (best are Mg and Co and worst Be with c/a ~ 1.568).
The face-centered cubic lattice (cF) has lattice points on the faces of the cube, that each gives exactly one half contribution, in addition to the corner lattice points, giving a total of four lattice points per unit cell (1 ⁄ 8 × 8 from the corners plus 1 ⁄ 2 × 6 from the faces).
The Wigner–Seitz cell of the face-centered cubic lattice is a rhombic dodecahedron. [9] In mathematics, it is known as the rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb. The Wigner–Seitz cell of the body-centered tetragonal lattice that has lattice constants with / > is the elongated dodecahedron.
The number at the end of the Pearson symbol gives the number of the atoms in the conventional unit cell (atoms which satisfy >,, for the atom's position (,,) in the unit cell). [4] The following two tables give the six letters possible for the crystal family and the five letters posible for the lattice type: