Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-materials-science-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/paper-1/1/b/solution
Past exam of the materials science course of the University of Cambridge 2017 Paper 1 1 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-20
Each calcium cation has eight fluoride neighbours at the vertices of a cube: cubic coordination. Each fluoride anion has four calcium neighbours in tetrahedral coordination. Both unlike-neighbour Euclidean distances are , with the conventional cubic lattice parameter.
Apply the Goldschmidt packing principle at its limiting eight-coordinate geometry: the eight surrounding anions just touch one another and also touch the central cation. The anions form a cube of edge , so and . Eliminating givesEquivalently, . This is a limiting radius ratio rule, rather than a measured ionic-radius ratio. It does not assume that the calcium sublattice consists of mutually touching spheres: the calcium positions have face-centred cubic symmetry, but that symmetry alone does not specify which ions touch. A different construction with touching calcium spheres and fluoride just filling their tetrahedral interstitial sites would instead give ; that is the opposite contact limit, not the eight-coordinate anion-contact ideal used here.
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