Crystal structures

Question 1

What does amorphous refer to?

Answer 1

atoms are arranged in a random order

Question 2

What does crystalline refer to?

Answer 2

atoms are arranged in a perfectly ordered order

Question 3

What does polycrystalline refer to?

Answer 3

atoms are locally arranged as crystalline, but globally made up of different patterns

Question 4

What is a lattice point?

Answer 4

A point in space where a particle of a crystal is located

Question 5

What is a Bravais lattice?

Answer 5

a repeating arrangement of lattice points which completely fills up space

Question 6

What is a lattice vector?

Answer 6

a vector which connects any two lattice points in a Bravais lattice

Question 7

What is a unit vector?

Answer 7

The smallest possible representation of a lattice vector. Any lattice point can be represented by a combination of unit vectors.

Question 8

What is a Miller index?

Answer 8

Miller index represents a vector perpendicular to a plane in a lattice

Question 9

How is a Miller index calculated?

Answer 9

Firstly, take the interception of the pane in the x, y and z axes.
Then take the reciprocal of these intersections.
Then scale up these fractions to be integers by multiplying them with a least common factor.

Question 10

What is a basis pair?

Answer 10

Every lattice point in a Bravais structure may have one atom attached to it in a regular way.
The basis pair may be made up of two different atoms.