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Symmetries. Bravais lattices.

All crystals must have translational symmetry. But there are many other symmetries possible in a crystal. These includes: rotation around an axis by degrees 60, 90, 120, 180. These are called: 6-fold, 4-fold, 3-fold, 2-fold rotations respectively. Other (e.g. 5-fold) rotations are not possible in a crystal, because the plane may not be covered with polygons corresponding to this symmetry (e.g. pentagons) without voids or overlap.3 mirror symmetry - reection across a plane inversion through a point (center of symmetry) improper rotation or rotoinversion - Combinations of rotation with a center of symmetry perform the symmetry operation of rotoinversion (rotation about an axis and a reection in a plane perpendicular to the axis - or rotation and inversion in a point.) Objects that have rotoinversion symmetry have an element of symmetry called a rotoinversion axis. There are 32 possible combinations of symmetry elements which are consistent with the translational symmetry. These 32 combinations dene the 32 crystal classes. Every crystal must belong to one of these. (These classes may be grouped into 7 crystal systems, we will use for the Bravais lattices below. When we combine the 32 crystal classes with the 14 Bravais lattices we get all of the 230 possible symmetry groups (space groups)) Example:

Figure 11: this crystal has the following symmetry elements: 1 - 4-fold rotation axis (A4 ) 4 - 2-fold rotation axes (A2 ), 2 cutting the faces and 2 cutting the edges 5 mirror planes (m), 2 cutting across the faces, 2 cutting through the edges, and one cutting horizontally through the center. There is a center of symmetry (i).

3.

We may talk about 1-fold rotation (rotation by 360o ) too.

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The name Bravais lattice may mean: The innite set of discrete points with an arrangement and orientation that appears exactly the same, from whichever of the points the array is viewed. For this reason the vertices of a 2D honeycomb structure does not form a 2D Bravais lattice. But the same structure with a diatomic basis does. The set of position vectors in (3.2) The set of translations determined by the position vectors

There are 14 Bravais lattices corresponding to the possible combinations of symmetries. But not all lattices are Bravais lattices, see Fig. ??.

Figure 12: The 14 Bravais lattices

The selection of the primitive vectors and the basis for a crystal is not unique. E.g. see Fig.14

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Figure 13: The hexagons do not form a Bravais lattice, because the orientation of the points is not the same from points P and Q. By selecting a 2 point basis (heavy solid lines) we create a Bravais lattice.

Figure 14: Two dierent primitive vector set for the bcc lattice. a) a1 = aex , a2 = aey , a3 = aez b) a1 = a (aey + ez ex ), a (aez + ex ey , a (aex + ey ez ) 2 2 2

Drawings which depict the geometry of the crystals (like the one on Fig.14 usually shows small balls with connecting lines. These lines neither represent the chemical bonds between the atoms in the crystal (not even for monatomic lattices) nor do they show the real size of the atoms. Examples: Close packing structures. If we consider a crystal with atoms represented by solid spheres then there are two dierent possible choices to select for the densest packing: we can view both structures as planes of spheres closely packed in two dimensions, which gives a hexagonal lattice; for close packing in three dimensions (Fig. 15) the successive planes must be situated so that a sphere in one plane sits at the center of a triangle formed by three spheres in the previous plane. There are two ways to form such a stacking of hexagonal close-packed planes: ...ABCABC..., and ...ABABAB..., where A, B,C represent the three possible relative positions of spheres in successive planes according to the rules of close packing, as illustrated in Fig. 15. The

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Figure 15: The two possible packing of spherical atoms in the densest formation

rst sequence corresponds to the fcc lattice, the second to the hcp lattice. Elements which crystallize in monatomic fcc are: Ba, Cr, Co, Fe, K, Li, Mo, Na, Nb, Rb, Ta, V, W Elements with hexagonal close packed (hcp) crystal structure: Be, Cd, Ce, -Co, Dy, Er, Gd, He (2K!), Hf, Ho, La, Lu, Mg, Nd, Os, Pr, Re, Ru, Ru, Sc, Tb, Ti, Tl, Tm, Y, Zn, Zr As a special variation of close packing the diamond lattice (or the zincblende lattice) that consists of two interpenetrating face centered cubic Bravais lattice, displaced along the body diagonal of the cubic cell by one quarter the length of the diagonal. (The same lattice therefore may be considered an fcc lattice with a diatomic basis.) Elements with diamond crystal structure: C, Si, Ge, -Sn (grey) Another special variation of the close packing structure is the wurtzite lattice that consists of two interpenetrating hcp lattices. The bcc structure is almost close packing Elements which crystallize in monatomic bcc are: Ar (at 4.2K!) , Ag, Al, Au, Ca, Ce, -Co, Cu, Ir, Kr, La, Ne, Ni, Pb, Pd, Pr, Pt, -Pu, Rh, Sc, Sr, Th, Xe (at 58 K!), Yb

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Figure 16: The diamond structure. The sides of the conning cell is drawn together with the bonds.

Figure 17: Left: one atom and its eight neighbors in the body-centered cubic (bcc) lattice; the size of the spheres representing atoms is chosen so as to make the neighbors and their distances apparent. Right: a portion of the three-dimensional bcc lattice; the size of the spheres is chosen so as to indicate the almost closepacking nature of this lattice.[Kaxiras]

Example: Calculate the surface density of atoms in a bcc crystal if the lattice constant is a = 0.5nm(= 5 ) and the surface A plane cuts the cells diagonally and it is perpendicular to the plane of the a1 and a2 vectorsa . Solution:

The plane in question goes through 4 corner atoms and the

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