Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-materials-science-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/paper-1/1/a/solution

Use fractional coordinates in a conventional cubic cell with an atom at the origin. The diamond cubic structure consists of an FCC Bravais lattice with the two-atom basis
The FCC translations within the conventional cell are , , and . Adding the basis gives eight atoms per conventional cell. Equivalently, two identical FCC sublattices are displaced by . It is not a monatomic close-packed arrangement: every atom has four tetrahedrally arranged nearest neighbors rather than twelve.
In the projection, label each atom by its fractional height. The and columns have height0; and have height1/2. The additional four columns are and at height1/4, and and at height3/4. Boundary columns repeat periodically; they must not be counted as full extra atoms.
Figure 1.
Original fractional-coordinate projection of diamond silicon, with atom heights, vertical mirror traces and a bond-centred inversion point
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