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Phase transitions (phase changes) that help describe polymorphism include polymorphic transitions as well as melting and vaporization transitions. According to IUPAC, a polymorphic transition is "A reversible transition of a solid crystalline phase at a certain temperature and pressure (the inversion point) to another phase of the same chemical composition with a different crystal structure."
Polyamorphism may apply to all amorphous states, i.e. glasses, other amorphous solids, supercooled liquids, ordinary liquids or fluids. A liquid–liquid transition however, is one that occurs only in the liquid state (red line in the phase diagram, top right).
A three-component compatibility diagram will depict the stable phase of each pure component as the point at each corner of a ternary diagram. Additional points in the diagram represent other pure phases, and lines connecting pairs of these points represent compositions at which the two phases are the only phases present.
Polymorphism is the occurrence of multiple crystalline forms of a material. It is found in many crystalline materials including polymers, minerals, and metals. According to Gibbs' rules of phase equilibria, these unique crystalline phases are dependent on intensive variables such as pressure and temperature.
The phase diagram shows, in pressure–temperature space, the lines of equilibrium or phase boundaries between the three phases of solid, liquid, and gas. The curves on the phase diagram show the points where the free energy (and other derived properties) becomes non-analytic: their derivatives with respect to the coordinates (temperature and ...
Crystal systems that have space groups assigned to a common lattice system are combined into a crystal family. The seven crystal systems are triclinic, monoclinic, orthorhombic, tetragonal, trigonal, hexagonal, and cubic. Informally, two crystals are in the same crystal system if they have similar symmetries (though there are many exceptions).
Polycrystalline or crystal powder samples may consist of more than one crystal phase. Such a phase comprises all the crystallites in the sample with the same crystal structure. Crystal phases can be identified by successfully matching suitable crystallographic parameters with their counterparts in database entries.
Crystallography ranges from the fundamentals of crystal structure to the mathematics of crystal geometry, including those that are not periodic or quasicrystals. At the atomic scale it can involve the use of X-ray diffraction to produce experimental data that the tools of X-ray crystallography can convert into detailed positions of atoms, and ...