Close-packing

You don't need to be Editor-In-Chief to add or edit content to WikiDoc. You can begin to add to or edit text on this WikiDoc page by clicking on the edit button at the top of this page. Next enter or edit the information that you would like to appear here. Once you are done editing, scroll down and click the Save page button at the bottom of the page.

(Redirected from Hexagonal)

Please Take Over This Page and Apply to be Editor-In-Chief for this topic: There can be one or more than one Editor-In-Chief. You may also apply to be an Associate Editor-In-Chief of one of the subtopics below. Please mail us [1] to indicate your interest in serving either as an Editor-In-Chief of the entire topic or as an Associate Editor-In-Chief for a subtopic. Please be sure to attach your CV and or biographical sketch.

Image:Close packing.svg

Fig. 1 Shown above are the HCP lattice (left) and the FCC lattice (right). Note that the two groups shown here are not unit cells that are capable of tessellating in 3D space. These groups do, however, readily illustrate the difference between the two lattices.

Image:Close-packed spheres.jpg

Fig. 2 Thomas Harriot in ca. 1585 first pondered the mathematics of the cannonball arrangement or cannonball stack, which has an FCC lattice. Note how the two balls facing the viewer in the second tier from the top contact the same ball in the tier below. This does not occur in an HCP lattice (the left organization in Fig. 1 above, and Fig. 4 below).

Image:Cannonball stack with FCC unit cell.jpg

Fig. 3 Shown here is a modified form of the cannonball stack wherein three extra spheres have been added to show all eight spheres in the top three tiers of the FCC lattice diagramed in Fig. 1.

Image:Hexagonal close-packed unit cell.jpg

Fig. 4 Shown here are all eleven spheres of the HCP lattice illustrated in Fig. 1. The difference between this stack and the top three tiers of the cannonball stack all occurs in the bottom tier, which is rotated half the pitch diameter of a sphere (60°). Note how the two balls facing the viewer in the second tier from the top do not contact the same ball in the tier below.

Image:Pyramid of 35 spheres animation.gif

Fig. 5 This animated view helps illustrate the three-sided pyramidal (tetrahedral) shape of the cannonball arrangement shown in Fig. 2 above.

Close-packing of spheres is the arranging of an infinite lattice of spheres so that they take up the greatest possible fraction of an infinite 3-dimensional space. Carl Friedrich Gauss proved that the highest average density that can be achieved by a regular lattice arrangement is $\frac{\pi}{3\sqrt 2} \simeq 0.74048$ . The Kepler conjecture states that this is the highest density that can be achieved by any arrangement of spheres, either regular or irregular.

There are two regular lattices that achieve this highest average density. They are called face-centered cubic (FCC) and hexagonal close-packed (HCP), based on their symmetry. Both are based upon sheets of spheres arranged at the vertices of a triangular tiling; they differ in how the sheets are stacked upon one another. In both arrangements each sphere has twelve neighbors. For every sphere there is one gap surrounded by six spheres (octahedral) and two smaller gaps surrounded by four spheres (tetrahedral).

Relative to a reference layer with positioning A, two more positionings B and C are possible. Every sequence of A, B, and C without immediate repetition of the same one is possible and gives an equally dense packing for spheres of a given radius.

The most regular ones are

HCP = ABABABA
FCC = ABCABCA

In close-packing, the center-to-center spacing of spheres in the x–y plane is a simple honeycomb-like tessellation with a pitch (distance between sphere centers) of one sphere diameter. The distance between sphere centers parallel to the z axis is:

$pitch_Z = \sqrt{6} \cdot {{d\over 3}}\approx0.816499658 d$ ,

where d is the diameter of a sphere; this follows from the tetrahedral arrangement of close-packed spheres.

Many crystal structures are based on a close-packing of atoms, or of large ions with smaller ions filling the spaces between them. The cubic and hexagonal arrangements are very close to one another in energy, and it may be difficult to predict which form will be preferred from first principles.

The coordination number of HCP and FCC is 12 and its atomic packing factor (APF) is the number mentioned above, 0.74.

Lattice Generation

When forming any sphere-packing lattice, the first fact to notice is that whenever two spheres touch a straight line may be drawn from the center of one sphere to the center of the other intersecting the point of contact. The distance between the centers along the shortest path namely that straight line will therefore be $(r 1 + r 1)$ . Where $r 1$ is the radius of the first sphere and $r 1$ is the radius of the second. In close packing all of the spheres share a common radius, $r$ . Therefore two centers would simply have a distance $2 r$ .

Simple HCP Lattice

Image:Animated-HCP-Lattice.gif

Fig. 6 An animation of HCP lattice generation.

To form an A-B-A-B-... Hexagonal Close Packing of spheres, the coordinate points of the lattice will be the spheres' centers. Suppose, the goal is to fill a box with spheres according to HCP. The box would be placed on the x-y-z coordinate space so that all of its volume and surface was non-negative, thus all of the spheres' volumes and surfaces would be non-negative.

First form a row of spheres. The centers will all lie on a straight line. Their x-coordinate will vary by $2 r$ since the distance between each center if the spheres are touching is $2 r$ . The y-coordinate and z-coordinate will be the same. For simplicity, say that the balls are the first row and that their y and z-coordinates are simply r, so that their surfaces rest on the zero-planes. Coordinates of the centers of the first row will look like $(2 r, r, r)$ , $(4 r, r, r)$ , $(6 r, r, r)$ , $(8r,r,r),\dots$ The sphere centered at $x = 0$ is immediately omitted because part of the sphere would lie outside.

Now, form the next row of spheres. Again, the centers will all lie on a straight line with x-coordinate differences of $2 r$ , but their will be a shift of distance $r$ in the x direction so that the center of every sphere in this row aligns with the x-coordinate of where two spheres touch in the first row. This allows the spheres of the new row to slide in closer to the first row until all spheres in the new row are touching two spheres of the first row. Since the new spheres touch two spheres, their centers form an equilateral triangle with those two neighbors' centers. The side lengths are all $2 r$ , so the height or y-coordinate difference between the rows is $\sqrt{3}r$ . Thus, this row will have coordinates like this: $(r,r+\sqrt{3}r,r)$ , $(3r,r+\sqrt{3}r,r)$ , $(5r,r+\sqrt{3}r,r)$ , $(7r,r+\sqrt{3}r,r),\dots$ The first sphere of this row only touches one sphere in the original row, but its location follows suit with the rest of the row.

The next row follows this pattern of shifting the x-coordinate by r and the y-coordinate by $\sqrt{3}$ . Add rows until reaching the x and y maximum borders of the box.

In an A-B-A-B-... stacking pattern, the odd numbered planes of spheres will have exactly the same coordinates save for a pitch difference in the z-coordinates and the even numbered planes of spheres will share the same x and y -coordinates. Both types of planes are formed using the pattern mentioned above, but the starting place for the first row's first sphere will be different.

Using the plane described precisely above as plane #1, the A plane, place a sphere on top of this plane so that it lies touching three spheres in the A-plane. The three spheres are all already touching each other, forming an equilateral triangle, and since the all touch the new sphere, the four centers form a regular tetrahedron^[1]. All of the sides are equal to $2 r$ because all of the sides are formed by two spheres touching. The height of which or the z-coordinate difference between the two "planes" is $\sqrt{6}r2/3$ . This, combined with the offsets in the x and y-coordinates gives the centers of the first row in the B plane: $(r,\sqrt{3}r/3,r+\sqrt{6}r2/3)$ , $(3r,\sqrt{3}r/3,r+\sqrt{6}r2/3)$ , $(5r,\sqrt{3}r/3,r+\sqrt{6}r2/3)$ , $(7r,\sqrt{3}r/3,r+\sqrt{6}r2/3),\dots$ The second row's coordinates follow the pattern first described above and are: $(2r,2\sqrt{3}r/3,r+\sqrt{6}r2/3)$ , $(4r,2\sqrt{3}r/3,r+\sqrt{6}r2/3)$ , $(6r,2\sqrt{3}r/3,r+\sqrt{6}r2/3)$ , $(8r,2\sqrt{3}r/3,r+\sqrt{6}r2/3),\dots$

The difference to the next plane, the A plane, is again $\sqrt{6}r2/3$ in the z-direction and a shift in the x and y to match those x and y coordinates of the first A plane.^[1]

References

External links

P. Krishna & D. Pandey, "Close-Packed Structures" International Union of Crystallography by University College Cardiff Press. Cardiff, Wales. PDF

Acknowledgement and Attribution Regarding Sources of Content

Some of the initial content on this page may be incorporated in part from copyleft sources in the public domain including wikis such as Wikipedia and AskDrWiki. Drug information for patients came from the The National Library of Medicine. Infectious disease information may have come from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Differential Diagnoses are drawn from clinicians as well as an amalgamation of 3 sources: 1.The Disease Database; 2. Kahan, Scott, Smith, Ellen G. In A Page: Signs and Symptoms. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004:3; 3. Sailer, Christian, Wasner, Susanne. Differential Diagnosis Pocket. Hermosa Beach, CA: Borm Bruckmeir Publishing LLC, 2002:7 .

[1]

Close-packing

Lattice Generation

Simple HCP Lattice

References

External links

See also

Acknowledgement and Attribution Regarding Sources of Content

Views

Personal tools

Search

Navigation

Help

Toolbox

In other languages