McCaw Chemistry

Resources written by Chas McCaw for sixth form chemistry teaching and beyond.

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Antifluorite 4: a polyhedral representation of the unit cell

Since the geometry around the sodium ions is tetrahedral, the structure can be represented as a three-dimensional array of corner-sharing tetrahedra. The structure to the left shows the tetrahedra of oxide ions around each sodium ion. The tetrahedra are coloured grey as they have sodium at the centre.

Go to page 5 to consider a polyhedral representation of the bulk lattice structure.

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