Course A: Atomic Structure of Material Flashcards
Alloy
A metallic substance that is composed of two or more elements.
Amorphous
Irregular; having no discernible order or shape.
In the context of solids, the molecules are randomly arranged, as in glass, rather than periodically arranged, as in a crystalline material.
A non-crystalline structure.
Anisotropic
Having properties that vary according to the direction of measurement.
Body-centred unit cell
A non-primitive unit cell that is described with a lattice point at the centre of each unit cell.
Centre of symmetry
A point through which an object can be inverted to bring the object into coincidence with itself.
Centrosymmetric
Possessing a centre of symmetry.
Ceramic
A compound of metallic and nonmetallic elements, in which the interatomic bonding is predominantly ionic.
Close-packed structure
A structure in which the atoms are packed closely together.
For structures made of only one atom type, the common close-packed structure are cubic close-packed and hexagonal close-packed.
Coordination number
The number of atoms forming a polyhedron around a central atom in a structure.
Coordination polyhedron
The polyhedron (commonly a tetrahedron or octahedron) that can be constructed around a cation with the centres os the surrounding anions forming the vertices.
Conventional unit cell
A unit cell that is oriented in a specific way with respect to the symmetry elements of the crystal.
The conventional cell may or may not be primitive.
Critical radius ratio
The ratio of cation radius to anion radius for the condition where the surrounding anions are touching each other as well as the central atom.
Crystal
A solid form of matter showing transitional periodicity in three dimensions in its atomic arrangement.
Crystal structure
The arrangement of atoms in a single crystal.
Crystal system
Classification based on the symmetry of the lattice.
There are 7 crystal systems.
d_hkl
The spacing between lattice planes (hkl)
Disordered materials
In general, this term is used to refer to materials that lack the three-dimensional long-range periodicity of a crystalline substance (e.g. liquids, glasses, polymers, liquid crystals)
Face-centred unit cell
A non-primitive unit cell that is described with a lattice point a the centre of each face of the unit cell.
Ferroelectric material
One that produces domains of spontaneous polarisation whose polar axis can be reversed in an electric field directed opposite to the total dipole moment of the lattice.
Fractional coordinates
Set of coordinates x, y, z that define the position of an atom in a unit cell in terms of fractions of the unit cell lengths.
Glass
A solid form of matter formed by cooling a liquid sufficiently fast to avoid crystallisation.
The arrangement of atoms in a glass does not exhibit periodicity, but on a short-scale the bonding may resemble that found in a crystal.
Glide plane
A glide plane is symmetry operation describing how a reflection in a plane, followed by a translation parallel with that plane, may leave the crystal unchanged.
Ionic bond
A primary bond arising from the electrostatic attraction between two oppositely charged ions.
Inversion centre
Same as centre of symmetry.