MATE 210: Crystal Structure Practice Problems

Solutions
Goal: Justify the usefulness of the atomic model of atomic structure.

Question 1:

What is the smallest repeating unit of a crystalline material?

Unit cell

Question 2:

Which of these is/are not a common crystal structure of metals?

a) Body-Centered Cubic
b) Amorphous
c) Face-Centered Cubic
d) Diagonal-Centered Cubic
e) Hexagonal Close Packed
f) Diamond

Question 3:

What crystal structures do the following materials have?

1) Steel used in kitchen knives.

Stainless steel typically has a Face Centered Cubic crystal structure due to
additional impurities. Most steels have a Body Centered Cubic crystal structure.

2) Glass used in car windows.

Glass does not have a crystal structure, so we call it amorphous.

3) Titanium in hip implants.

Hexagonal Close-Packed

4) Copper used in computer chips.

Face Centered Cubic
Question 4:

Why is crystallization more likely to happen during slow cooling? Are there situations
where being amorphous is more likely to occur? Explain your reasoning.
Crystallizing during slow cooling allows materials time to minimize the system’s total
energy, which is thermodynamically favorable. Generally, processes that involve fast
cooling have the highest chance to produce amorphous materials since you do not give
the system time to come to thermodynamic equilibrium.

Question 5:

a) Calculate the density of the following materials.

b) Assuming the atoms are hard spheres, and all the metals have either a cubic
crystal structure or a hexagonal close packed crystal structure, find the crystal
structure of all the metal samples. Does this match the crystal structure we would
expect?

Hint: If a material doesn’t match FCC or BCC, assume the material has a HCP crystal
structure (confirm this by approximating the c lattice parameter as 2*a)

Material Mass Volume Density Lattice n n Crystal

(g) (cm3) (g/ cm3) parameter assuming assuming structure
(nm) cubic HCP
structure structure
Al 43.8 16 2.7 .40 3.9 FCC
Cd 8.7 1 8.7 .29 1.1 5.9 HCP**
Cu 145.5 16.19 8.9 .36 4.0 FCC
Fe 8.1 1 8.1 .28 1.9 BCC
Mg 1.8 1 1.8 .32 1.5 6.2 HCP**
Nb 8.8 1 8.8 .33 2.0 BCC
Si .54 Diamon
2.4 1 2.4 8.1
d
Ti 4.6 1 4.6 .29 1.4 5.8 HCP**
W 19.4 1 19.4 .32 2.1 BCC
Zn 7.3 1 7.3 .27 1.3 6.3 HCP**

**Note: If you used c = 2*a, you may get values of n ranging from 5.8-7.3. This is
because in these materials c does not always equal 2a. You can google the exact lattice
parameters of these materials to get a value of n that is closer to what you would expect
(6). The values I put in the table are using the exact values of the a and c lattice
parameters for the HCP structure.
Question 6:

Sketch the close-packed plane and direction(s) for the following materials. If it doesn’t
have a close-packed plane or close-packed direction, write “material doesn’t have one”
a) Copper
b) Iron

a) Copper has the FCC crystal structure. The close packed plane is the (111) plane.
The close-packed direction is the [110] direction. Both are shown below.

Cross-section of (111) plane

(111) plane in black

[110] direction in red [110]

b) Iron, as a BCC material, does not have a close-packed plane. Below is a sketch
of the close-packed direction [111]
Question 7:

Determine the miller indices of the following crystal planes.

Question 8:

Determine the miller indices of the following crystal directions.

Question 9:

Your goal is to make a turbine blade with the highest stiffness. In which crystal direction
would you want to grow the material to ensure the load is aligned with the direction of
highest stiffness?

You would want to grow the material so that the load aligned with the close-packed
direction of the material. This is because short bond lengths correspond to high bond
energies, giving your material excellent overall strength.

For materials with a BCC crystal structure, you would choose the [111] direction. For
materials with a FCC crystal structure, you would choose the [110] direction.

Question 10:

Rank the density of the following classes of materials from lowest to highest: polymers,
ceramics, metals

A. polymers < metals < ceramics

B. ceramics < metals < polymers
C. metals < polymers < ceramics
D. polymers < ceramics < metals

Justify your choice using crystal structures.

Polymers have the lowest density due to being amorphous rather than crystalline.

Polymers are composed of a chain of carbon and hydrogen bonds with some additional
elements in what are called function groups. These chains are connected with
secondary bonds. Because of the shape of these chains, polymers often do not have
crystal structures. When they solidify, they do not condense into neat or orderly shapes
like metals and ceramics do. Materials that do not solidify into a crystalline structure are
called amorphous. Amorphous materials have a very low density since the atoms do not
pack together tightly.

Ceramics solidify into a crystalline structure but not the densest ones.

While ceramics do solidify into a crystalline structure, they often solidify into less dense
structures such as simple cubic or body-centered cubic. These two structures have a
low atomic packing factor, resulting in a lower density. The charge transfer that occurs
during bonding prevents the atoms from packing into tighter packed structures.

Metals solidify into tightly packed structures due to non-directional bonding.

Because the valence electrons in metals do not belong to particular atoms, metals are
able to solidify into more tightly backed structures such as face centered cubic.