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Crystalline materials have a regular, repeating three-dimensional arrangement of atoms, while amorphous solids lack this structure. The crystal structure affects many physical, optical, and electrical properties of materials. Researchers study crystalline materials to determine their structure and how it relates to other properties. Real crystals may have defects that impact their overall properties.
Many solids and some crystalline liquids have a regular, repetitive, three-dimensional arrangement of atoms known as the crystal structure or crystal lattice. In contrast, an amorphous solid is a type of solid material, such as glass, that lacks long-range repeating structure. Many of the physical, optical, and electrical properties of crystalline solids or liquids are closely related to the crystalline structure. The repeating units of a crystalline structure, which are made up of small boxes or other three-dimensional shapes, are called “cells”. Many of these cells are grouped in an orderly, repeating pattern to form the overall structure.
The crystalline structure of a crystalline material can influence many of that material’s overall properties. It is one of the main determining factors influencing the optical properties of the material, for example. The crystalline structure also significantly affects the reactivity of the crystalline material, as it determines the arrangement of the reactive atoms on the edges and outer faces of the crystalline solid or liquid. Other important material characteristics, including the electrical and magnetic properties of some materials, are also determined largely by the crystal structure.
Mineralogists, crystallographers, chemists and physicists often study crystalline materials in laboratory settings. Some simple aspects of crystalline structures can be determined through simple geometric measurements, but various methods based on the diffraction of X-rays, neutrons, electrons or other particles allow much easier and more accurate determinations of the structure. Some researchers are concerned only with determining the structure of a given crystalline material, while others are more interested in determining how that structure relates to other material properties. Still other researchers are interested in finding useful applications for various materials based on their structures, and some even try to synthesize new crystalline solids and liquids based on the predicted properties of their desired structures.
It should be noted that although theoretical crystalline materials are composed of a perfect and coherent series of repeating units, real crystals tend to have defects. These defects are, in most cases, simply irregularities in the otherwise regular crystalline structure. In some cases, this occurs when an atom occupies a different place in a given crystal structure than it normally would. The different properties of this atom can have substantial impacts on how the structural units of the crystal arrange themselves around it. Likewise, defects or irregularities in actual crystals can have substantial impacts on the overall properties of the crystalline material.
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