Crystal, defect, point faces

Ionic solids, such as lithium fluoride and sodium chloride, form regularly shaped crystals with well defined crystal faces. Pure samples of these solids are usually transparent and colorless but color may be caused by quite small impurity contents or crystal defects. Most ionic crystals have high melting points. 

The electrocrystallization on an identical metal substrate is the slowest process of this type. Faster processes which are also much more frequent, are connected with ubiquitous defects in the crystal lattice, in particular with the screw dislocations (Fig. 5.25). As a result of the helical structure of the defect, a monoatomic step originates from the point where the new dislocation line intersects the surface of the crystal face. It can be seen in Fig. 5.48 that the wedge-shaped step gradually fills up during electrocrystallization after completion it slowly moves across the crystal face and winds up into a spiral. The resultant progressive spiral cannot disappear from the crystal surface and thus provides a sufficient number of growth... 

The catalyst particle is usually a complex entity composed of a porous solid, serving as the support for one or more catalytically active phase(s). These may comprise clusters, thin surface mono- or multilayers, or small crystallites. The shape, size and orientation of clusters or crystallites, the extension and arrangement of different crystal faces together with macrodcfects such as steps, kinks, etc., are parameters describing the surface topography. The type of atoms and their mutual positions at the surface of the active phase or of the support, and the type, concentration and mutual positions of point defects (foreign atoms in lattice positions, interstitials, vacancies, dislocations, etc.) define the surface structure. 

A perfect crystal face should be completely free of any surface defects. In view of its further application for crystal growth studies, however, a face not intersected by screw dislocations can be considered conditionally as perfect. All other defects have either little or no effect on the growth behavior of the face. To meet this situation, the term quasi-ideal or quasi-perfect" has been introduced for the description of faces free of screw dislocations [5.14]. A quasi-perfect face is characterized by extended atomically smooth terraces separated by monatomic steps and absence of emergence points of screw dislocations. A smooth quasi-perfect face without steps can be described as an intact quasi-perfect face". 

Optical microscopic examinations of the reactant at room temperature can provide information on the shapes and sizes of the crystallites and structural information from features of observed symmetry. The degree of perfection of the crystallites can be assessed and damage, major defects and inclusions may be identified. Surface defects, such as the points of emergence of dislocations, may be revealed by etching the sample surface with a suitable solvent. Cleaving of a crystal gives two closely related faces and one section may be etched to reveal the location of defects while the other section is partially decomposed and then re-examined [30,31 ] to enable the distributions of the different surface features (usually dislocations and nuclei) to be compared. Such techniques have been used to investigate the role of defects in the initiation of decomposition [32,33]. 

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