McCaw Chemistry

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

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Zinc blende 10: a polyhedral representation of the unit cell

Since the geometry around the zinc 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 sulfide ions around each zinc ion. The tetrahedra are coloured grey as they have a zinc ion at their centre.

Go to page 11 to consider a polyhedral representation of the bulk lattice structure.

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