Determination of coordination number and packing fraction of metal chloride models
Abstract
This project is meant to describe the structures of metal chlorides by using models where
the metal and chloride ions are arranged alternately at the lattice points of the cubic
lattice. Metal chlorides have different crystal structures due to arrangement of atoms
inside them. The atomic arrangement of the crystal is made by repeatedly placing a unit
cell consisting of a small number of atoms according to the rules for assembling the crystal
lattice.
The major objective was to determine the coordination number and packing fraction of
any three metal chlorides and model the structure of each metal chloride and determine
the extent of packing. It was noted that sodium chloride structure is densely packed with
74 %of its structure filled with atoms followed by Iron II chloride which had 68 %of its
lattice filled with atoms and then ceasium chloride being less dense with 52 %of its lattice
filled with atoms. This means that sodium chloride has a stable chloride structure than
the other two metal chlorides. But an improvement was required to be done to increase
on the efficiency of packing of atoms to improve on the stability of the metal chlorides.