Basic Elements of Crystallography

This textbook is a complete and clear introduction to the field of crystallography. It includes an extensive discussion on the 14 Bravais lattices and their reciprocals, the basic concepts of point- and space-group symmetry, the crystal structure of elements and binary compounds, and much more. The purpose of this textbook is to illustrate rather than describe "using many words" the structure of materials. Even readers who are completely unfamiliar with the topic, but still interested in learning how the atoms are arranged in crystal structures, will find this book immensely useful. Each chapter is accompanied by exercises designed to encourage students to explore the different crystal structures they are learning about. The solutions to the exercises are also provided at the end of the book.

One-, Two-, and Three-dimensional Crystal Lattices. Crystal Structure of Elements. Crystal Structure of Important Binary Compounds. Reciprocal Lattice. Direct and Reciprocal Lattices. X-ray Diffraction. Exercises with Solutions.

Nevill Gonzalez Szwacki obtained his master’s degree in theoretical physics from the University of Warsaw, Poland. He received his PhD in computational physics from the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2003. In 2004 he was a Robert A. Welch Postdoctoral Fellow, first at Rice University and later at Texas Tech University and Texas Southern University. In 2010 he was appointed assistant professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Warsaw. Dr. Gonzalez Szwacki is a theoretical physicist whose research centers on computational modeling of novel magnetic and nonmagnetic materials with special emphasis on their size-dependent properties. Teresa Szwacka received her master’s degree in theoretical physics and her PhD and habilitation in the field of condensed matter theory from the University of Warsaw, Poland. She has been a professor of physics since 1969 at the University of Los Andes (ULA), Venezuela. Prof. Szwacka was one of the founders of the Department of Physics at ULA. She was also for many years associated with the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw. Her main research activity concerns the theoretical studies of the optical and transport properties of bulk and low-dimensional semiconductor systems. Prof. Szwacka has more than 40 years of experience in teaching physics courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.