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In crystallography, crystal structure is a description of ordered arrangement of atoms, ... The most important forms of silica include: α-quartz, β-quartz, ...
There are distinct differences between crystalline solids and amorphous solids: most notably, the process of forming a glass does not release the latent heat of fusion, but forming a crystal does. A crystal structure (an arrangement of atoms in a crystal) is characterized by its unit cell, a small imaginary box containing one or more atoms in a ...
In addition, physical properties are often controlled by crystalline defects. The understanding of crystal structures is an important prerequisite for understanding crystallographic defects. Most materials do not occur as a single crystal, but are poly-crystalline in nature (they exist as an aggregate of small crystals with different orientations).
The principles that govern the assembly of crystal and glass structures are described, models of many of the technologically important crystal structures (alumina, quartz, perovskite) are studied, and the effect of crystal structure on the various fundamental mechanisms responsible for many physical properties are discussed.
X-ray crystal structures can also help explain unusual electronic or elastic properties of a material, shed light on chemical interactions and processes, or serve as the basis for designing pharmaceuticals against diseases. Modern work involves a number of steps all of which are important.
The point symmetry of a structure can be further described as follows. Consider the points that make up the structure, and reflect them all through a single point, so that (x,y,z) becomes (−x,−y,−z). This is the 'inverted structure'. If the original structure and inverted structure are identical, then the structure is centrosymmetric.
Another important cubic crystal structure is the diamond cubic structure, which can appear in carbon, silicon, germanium, and tin. Unlike fcc and bcc, this structure is not a lattice, since it contains multiple atoms in its primitive cell .
Myoglobin sketch Alpha helix. 1958 – Myoglobin was the very first crystal structure of a protein molecule. [2] Myoglobin cradles an iron-containing heme group that reversibly binds oxygen for use in powering muscle fibers, and those first crystals were of myoglobin from the sperm whale, whose muscles need copious oxygen storage for deep dives.