Reciprocal Lattice PDF
Reciprocal Lattice PDF
Reciprocal Lattice PDF
Lecture 2 Summary
Lattice planes
Set of parallel planes Every lattice point belongs to one plane in the set. There is an infinite number of such families of planes that can be associated with a Bravais lattice. Three such families of planes are drawn in the figure. This is an alternative description of a lattice.
Miller indices
The orientation of a plane can be specified by three integers, the so called Miller indices. In the figure above, the Miller indices for the three sets of planes are given as an example. Note also that the planes in the sets with lower Miller indices are spaced further apart (shaded areas depict the interplanar spacing). The Miller indices of a single plane or a set of planes are denoted (ijk). All planes with the same symmetry are denoted {ijk}. A direction in a crystal is denoted [uvw] and all equivalent directions (same symmetry) are <uvw>. In cubic crystals [ijk] is orthogonal to (ijk). See next how to determine the Miller indices!
3. reduce the numbers to the smallest set of integers having the same ratio. These are then called the Miller indices.
Example
Exercise:
Determine the Miller indices of the indicated family of lattice planes. In which points does the plane closest to the origin cut the axes?
Greatly simplifies the description of lattice-periodic functions (charge density, one-electron potential...).
Fourier series
alternatively
Reciprocal lattice
1D
3D
Lattice waves
real space b a 2/a (0,0) 2/b reciprocal space
Lattice waves
real space b a 2/a (0,0) 2/b reciprocal space
Lattice waves
real space b a 2/a (0,0) 2/b reciprocal space
Lattice waves
real space b a 2/a (0,0) 2/b reciprocal space
Lattice waves
real space b a 2/a (0,0) 2/b reciprocal space
Lattice waves
real space b a 2/a (0,0) 2/b reciprocal space
The fcc lattice is the reciprocal of the bcc lattice and vice versa.
Consider the (ijk) plane closest to the origin. It cuts the coordinate axes in a1/i, a2/j and a3/k. A triangular section of the plane has these points in the corners. The sides of the triangle are given by the vectors (a1/i) - (a2/j) and analogously for the other two sides. Now the scalar product of Gijk with any of these sides is easily seen to be zero. Hence the vector Gijk is directed normal to the (ijk) planes. The distance between two lattice planes is given by the projection of for example a1/i onto the unit vector normal to the planes, i.e. dijk = (a1/i)nijk, where dijk is the interplanar distance between two (ijk)-planes. The unit normal is just Gjk divided by its length. Hence the magnitude of the reciprocal lattice vector is given by 2/ dijk.
Examples
The Brillouin zone in one dimension (H, p. 47) consists of the interval between /a and /a. It is also easy to draw Brillouin zones of two dimensional lattices. In three dimensions things become a little more complicated, though: The reciprocal lattices to a simple cubic lattice is also simple cubic but with side length of the cube 2/a. The reciporocal lattices of b) the fcc lattice is bcc (H p. 52), c) the bcc lattice is fcc , d) the hexagonal lattice is also hexagonal .