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Ex2 1

The document calculates the maximum fraction of volume occupied by atoms in a simple cubic crystal structure. It assumes the atoms are closely packed spheres of radius a/2 located at the corners of the cubic unit cell of side a. There is one atom per unit cell, and the atoms occupy 52% of the unit cell volume. The packing densities of other crystal structures are also listed in a table.

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Manas Ranjan Mantri
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36 views1 page

Ex2 1

The document calculates the maximum fraction of volume occupied by atoms in a simple cubic crystal structure. It assumes the atoms are closely packed spheres of radius a/2 located at the corners of the cubic unit cell of side a. There is one atom per unit cell, and the atoms occupy 52% of the unit cell volume. The packing densities of other crystal structures are also listed in a table.

Uploaded by

Manas Ranjan Mantri
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Example 2.

Solution

Calculate the maximum fraction of the volume in a simple cubic crystal occupied by the atoms. Assume that the atoms are closely packed and that they can be treated as hard spheres. This fraction is also called the packing density. The atoms in a simple cubic crystal are located at the corners of the units cell, a cube with side a. Adjacent atoms touch each other so that the radius of each atom equals a/2. There are eight atoms occupying the corners of the cube, but only one eighth of each is within the unit cell so that the number of atoms equals one per unit cell. The packing density is then obtained from: 4 3 4 a 3 r ( ) Volume of atoms 3 3 2 = = 52 % = = Volume of the unit cell 6 a3 a3 or about half the volume of the unit cell is occupied by the atoms. The packing density of four cubic crystals is listed in the table below. Radius Atoms/ Packing density unit cell Simple cubic 1 a = 52 % 2 6 Body centered cubic 2 3a 3 = 68 % 4 8 Face centered cubic 4 2a 2 = 74 % 4 6 Diamond 8 3a 3 = 34 % 8 16

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