Shared flowchart

Chemistry · L4 · From unit cell to bulk crystal: cubic packing types

Sign in to clone

How the three common cubic unit cells (simple cubic, body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic) differ in atoms per cell, coordination number, and packing efficiency.

by @openstemUpdated Chemistry
Unit cell(smallest repeating 3-D block)Simple cubic (SC)8 corners × 1/8 = 1 atom/cellcoordination number 6Body-centered cubic (BCC)8 corners × 1/8 + 1 centre = 2 atoms/cellcoordination number 8Face-centered cubic (FCC)8 corners × 1/8 + 6 faces × 1/2 = 4 atoms/cellcoordination number 12e.g. polonium~52% packing efficiencye.g. iron, tungsten, sodium~68% packing efficiencye.g. copper, aluminium, gold~74% packing efficiency (densest)

We use privacy-friendly product analytics (no session recording, PII masked) to improve OpenStem. Load analytics? Privacy Policy