Face-centered cell

The unit cell considered here is a primitive (P) unit cell that is, each unit cell has one lattice point. Nonprimitive cells contain two or more lattice points per unit cell. If the unit cell is centered in the (010) planes, this cell becomes a B unit cell for the (100) planes, an A cell for the (001) planes a C cell. Body-centered unit cells are designated I, and face-centered cells are called F. Regular packing of molecules into a crystal lattice often leads to symmetry relationships between the molecules. Common symmetry operations are two- or three-fold screw (rotation) axes, mirror planes, inversion centers (centers of symmetry), and rotation followed by inversion. There are 230 different ways to combine allowed symmetry operations in a crystal leading to 230 space groups.12 Not all of these are allowed for protein crystals because of amino acid asymmetry (only L-amino acids are found in proteins). Only those space groups without symmetry (triclinic) or with rotation or screw axes are allowed. However, mirror lines and inversion centers may occur in protein structures along an axis. 

The unit cell considered here is a primitive (P) unit cell that is, each unit cell has one lattice point. Nonprimitive cells contain two or more lattice points per unit cell. If the unit cell is centered in the (010) planes, this cell becomes a B unit cell for the (100) planes, an A cell for the (001) planes, a C cell. Body-centered unit cells are designated I, and face-centered cells are called F. Regular packing of molecules into a crystal lattice often leads to symmetry... 

A crystal lattice is an array of points arranged according to the symmetry of the crystal system. Connecting the points produces the lattice that can be divided into identical parallelepipeds. This parallelepiped is the unit cell. The space lattice can be reproduced by repeating the unit cells in three dimensions. The seven basic primitive space lattices (P) correspond to the seven systems. There are variations of the primitive cells produced by lattice points in the center of cells (body-centered cells, I) or in the center of faces (face-centered cells, F). Base-centered orthorhombic and monoclinic lattices are designated by C. Primitive cells contain one lattice point (8 x 1/8). Body-centered cells... 

Rhombohedral distortion of Na-A zeolite as a function of temperature expressed as the deviation Aa from 90 of the face-centered cell. The solid line is drawn as a guide to the eye. 

One has to take into account, however, that the unit cell which is relevant for spectroscopy is the primitive (or Wigner-Seitz) unit cell. It is a parallelepiped from which the entire lattice may be generated by applying multiples of elementary translations. Face- and body-centered cells are multiple unit cells. The content of such a cell has to be divided by a factor m to obtain the content of a primitive unit cell. This factor m is implicitly given by the international symbol for a space group P and R denote primitive cells (m = 1), face-centered cells are denoted A, B, C (m = 2), and F m = 4), and body-centered cells are represented by I m = 2). Examples are described by Turrell (1972). 

Figure 4.1 The 14 Bravais unit cells. The letters after the name of the crystal system denote P is the primitive unit cell B and C, the cells are centered on two faces I is the body-centered cell F is the face-centered cell.

Fig. 29.5. Two methods of representation of the rhombohedral distortion of the perovskite structure, (a) The primitive cell and its relationship to the ideal cell is shown, (b) The face-centered cell and the primitive cell are also shown.

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