Skip to content
EntityQ898786· pop 43· linked from 1,999 articles

crystal system

Sign in to save

Also known as crystal family, lattice system

class of space groups, lattices, point groups, or crystals

Wikidata facts

Subclass of
point group
Show 5 more facts
Commons category
Crystal structures
topic's main category
Category:Crystal systems
on focus list of Wikimedia project
Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
topic has template
Template:Crystal systems
Sources (2)

via Wikidata · CC0

~11 min read

Encyclopedic overview

The diamond crystal structure belongs to the face-centered cubic lattice, with a repeated two-atom pattern.

In crystallography, a crystal system is a set of point groups (a group of geometric symmetries with at least one fixed point). A lattice system is a set of Bravais lattices (an infinite array of discrete points). Space groups (symmetry groups of a configuration in space) are classified into crystal systems according to their point groups, and into lattice systems according to their Bravais lattices. Crystal systems that have space groups assigned to a common lattice system are combined into a crystal family.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “crystal system” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.