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 th

Table of Contents:
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.

About the Author :
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.

Review :
"The book succeeds in giving an exhaustive and exact introduction to the systematic representation of matter in three-dimensional space. The exercises presented at the end of each chapter are manageable, whilst ensuring the complete understanding of material explained beforehand. Despite its thorough analysis of the subject, the volume of this book is kept to a minimum." -Materials Today "An excellent primer on crystallography- a discipline necessary for everyone concerned with the solid state - overarching the fields of materials science, metallurgy, condensed matter physics, and micro- and nanotechnology. Abundant and clear drawings allow the authors to introduce the concepts of crystal structures and lattices in a very easy way, starting from one-dimensional cases and proceeding to all 14 Bravais lattices. The book expounds on the close-packed monoatomic structures as well as several important binary compounds. The ideas of the reciprocal lattice are explained in a straightforward manner. The strengths of this book are the excellent images and a large number of tabulated lattice parameters. This textbook is definitely a good starting point for learning crystallography or teaching introductory courses. I would certainly recommend this to my students, while professionals may also enjoy reading it." -Prof. Boris I. Yakobson, Rice University, USA "Crystals are viewed as objects of nature which can be described by a set of few vectors. The consequent restriction to elementary topics and elementary methods, however, goes hand in hand with an intuitive, explicit, and very detailed presentation of the subject, and experienced teachers like Professor Szwacka know that the most important means in mastering crystallography is visualization. In the text, more than 150 well-designed figures serve this purpose. The detailed description of the crystals of elements and a number of binary compounds will certainly be appreciated by undergraduates and graduates in physics as well as in other science disciplines. This fine book provides the appropriate basic knowledge of crystallography both for those who are satisfied with introductory level and for those who like to go for more. The authors deserve acknowledgement for their didactic skills." -Prof. Janos Hajdu, Structural Biology Labs, Biomedical Centre, Sweden