McCaw Chemistry

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

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Fluorite 7: a polyhedral representation of the fluorite unit cell

Since the geometry around the fluoride 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 calcium ions around each fluoride ion. The tetrahedra are coloured yellow as they have fluoride at the centre.

Go to page 8 to consider a polyhedral representation of the bulk lattice structure.

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