6.3 Crystal structures of metals.
Crystal structures. Most metals and alloys crystallize in one of three very common structures: body-centered cubic (bcc), hexagonal close packed (hcp), or cubic close packed (ccp, also called face centered cubic, fcc). In all three structures the coordination number of the metal atoms (i.e., the number of equidistant nearest neighbors) is rather high: 8 for bcc, and 12 for hcp and ccp. We can contrast this with the low coordination numbers (i.e., low valences - like 2 for O, 3 for N, or 4 for C) found in nonmetals. In the bcc structure, the nearest neighbors are at the corners of a cube surrounding the metal atom in the center. In the hcp and ccp structures, the atoms pack like stacked cannonballs or billiard balls, in layers with a six-coordinate arrangement. Each atom also has six more nearest neighbors from layers above and below. The stacking sequence is ABCABC... in the ccp lattice and ABAB... in hcp. In both cases, it can be shown that the spheres fill 74% of the volume of the lattice. This is the highest volume fraction that can be filled with a lattice of equal spheres.