Crystalline Structures In Materials

There are lots of classification of materials that used in manufacturing and one of these classification can be done according to their crytal structures. Crystalline and non-crystaline structured materials. In thsi article we basically explain what is crytalline structure in manufacturing materials, and what are the features of these crystalline structured materials.

What Is Crystalline Structured Material?

When it said ‘crystal’, the crystallite materials such as salt, diamond and these kinds of materials are appear in people’s mind. But even metals can have crysyalline structures. Crystalline structure means that the atoms of a material are aligned regulary inside the structure. This alignment can have various kinds of types, for example like in metals. These alignments can be observed from unit cells. These unit cells represent the minimum indication of crystalling alignment in a material.

For example in metals, this unit cel lattice structures has three types;

• BCC: Body-centred cubic crystalline lattice type.
• FCC: Face-centred cubic crystalline lattice type.
• HCP: Hexagonal-close-packed crystalline lattice type.

Eech of these types represent different materials properties for a metal. A metal type can have different crystalline structures in different temperatures suc as Iron, is BCC at room temperature; it changes to FCC above 912 degrees celsius and back to BCC at temperatures above1400 degrees celsius.

A perfect crystalline structures can be very desirable in engineering applications. For example thhe price of a diamond depends on the perfectness of crystalline structure of this diamond. Also defects can occur in crystalline structures as grain boundries. Crystalline structures occur inside grain boundries inside a material. The density of these grain boundires means much more defects in crystalline structure.

The general logic of crystalline structur of materials is like about.

If you have any questions and comments about this topic, leave them below!

Image courtesy: Fundamentals of modern manufacturing