Metallic structure

Dr. Muhammad Riaz Bhatti

Objectives
Understand how metal/alloy structure is formed & relates to theirs properties?

Outline

Atomic bonding

Structure of metals
Development of grain

structure

Atomic bonding

All true solids show a crystal structure which has a definite geometric arrangement of atoms or molecules. Some materials such as glass do not have a regular arrangement of molecules and are not true solids but rather supercooled liquids.

Atomic bonding

Question ? What holds the atoms or molecules of solids together? There are four possible types of bonds: i. ionic bond ii. Covalent or homopolar bond iii. Metallic bond iv. Van der Waals forces
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Ionic bond
The bond formed by the complete transfer of electrons from electropositive atoms to more electronegative atom is called ionic or electrovalent.

Covalent bond
The bond formed by the sharing of one, two, or three electron from each element is single covalent, double covalent and triple covalent bond respectively.

Metallic bond

When a complete outer shell cannot be formed by either electron transfer or electron sharing than it is possible to have a bond known as metallic bond. A metallic bond is the electrostatic force of attraction that the neighbour positive metallic ions have for the free (delocalized) electrons. The most commonly accepted theory for metallic bonding is called electron sea model

Metallic bond

Metallic bonding accounts for many properties of metals, such as strength, malleability, ductility, thermal and electrical conductivity, opacity, and luster

The highly mobile free electrons account for the high electrical and
thermal conductivity values in metals.

Structure of materials

The physical structure of solid materials depends on the

arrangement of the atoms, ions or molecules and the

bonding forces between them.

Crystalline materials have regular geometrical shape in which atoms have characteristic regular and repetitive three dimensional arrangement Examples of crystalline materials are metals, alloys and some ceramic materials.

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Space lattice

Metallic atoms, on solidification, arrange themselves in a regular three dimensional pattern. The three dimensional network of imaginary connecting atoms is called space lattice, or lines

The pattern of points made by the corners of the unit cells when they are packed together is called the space lattice.

Three dimensional lattice indicates the external shapes of crystal.

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Unit cell

The unit cell is a small box containing one or more atoms, a spatial arrangement of atoms. or The smallest unit having the full symmetry of the crystal is called the unit cell.
The unit cells for each metal is defined by its lattice parameters, which are

the edges of the unit cell a, b, c (called axial lengths) and

the angles (between b & c), (between a & c) and (between a & b) are called interaxial angles.
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Crystal Structures of Metals

Metals are characterized by the

metallic bonds and

possess the distinguishing characteristics of

Crystalline structure good electrical and thermal conductivity, luster, the ability to be plastically deformed to a fair degree without fracturing, and a relativity high specific gravity (density) compared to non-metals. strength
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Crystal Structures of Metals

When metals solidify, the atoms arrange themselves in a geometric lattice. Many metals exist in only one crystal structure or lattice forms. Some metals can exist in solid state in two or more lattice

forms. These metals are said to be allotropic or polymorphic

(poly means more than one; morph means structure), and

The change from the one lattice to another is called

allotropic transformation. The most notable example of such

a metal is iron.
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Metals exist in one of the 14 crystal structures at room temperature.

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Crystal Structure

Most Metals exist in one of the 3 crystal structures

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The Crystal Structure of Metals

3 basic patterns of atomic arrangement in metal:

Body-centered cubic (bcc)

Face-centered cubic (fcc)

Hexagonal close packed (hcp)

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Crystal Structure

Most commercially important metals solidify into one of the three lattice types: Examples Body - centered cubic (BCC): e.g. Cr, Fe, Mn .Nb Face-centered cubic (FCC): e.g. Ag, Au, Pd, Al, Ca, Cu, Ni Hexagonal closed - pack (HCP): e.g. Ti, Zn, Mg, Cd, Zr

a unit cell

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Face-centered-cubic (FCC) crystal structure

In FCC, there is one lattice point at each corner of the cube and one at the centre of each cube face.

FCC has 4 atoms per unit cell.

The atoms in the FCC crystal structure are packed as closed together as possible.

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Face-centered-cubic (FCC) crystal structure

If the atoms in the FCC unit cell are considered to be spherical, an atomic packing factor (APF) can be calculated by using the following equation:

APF or packing fraction is the fraction of volume in a crystal structure that is occupied by atoms.

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FCC

The APF for the FCC is 0.74 which is greater than the 0.68 factor for the BCC structure.

Plastic deformation of metallic crystals generally

occur by slipping of closed packed planes over each other.

FCC is the preferred structure for many of the engineering metals and tend to provide the exceptionally high ductility that is the characteristic of Al, Cu, Pb, Ni, and Fe (at elevated).

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FCC Unit Cell

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Body Centered Cubic (BCC) Crystal Structure

The unit cell for BCC consists

of a sphere (atom) at the

centre of cube with 8 other spheres at the corners of the cube & touching the central sphere.

BCC has 2 atoms per unit cell.

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BCC
APF for the BCC = 68, i.e. 68 percent of the volume of BCC unit cell is occupied by atoms and the remaining 32 percent is empty space. Therefore packing is not so close as compared to FCC or HCP. Many metals such as iron, Cr, W, Mo and V have the BCC crystal structure at room temp. Compared to materials with other structures, BCC metals tend to be high strength.

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BCC Unit Cell

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Hexagonal close packed (HCP) crystal structure

A stacking sequence of any two alternating layers results in a structure known as Hexagonal close packed (HCP), where the individual close-packed planes can be clearly identified.

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Hexagonal close packed (HCP) crystal structure

The APF of the HCP crystal structure is 0.74, the same as for the FCC. Metals having HCP structures e.g., Mg and Zn tend to

have poor ductility, fail in brittle manner, and

often require special processing procedure.

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Development of a grain structures

When a metal solidifies, a small particle of solid forms from the liquid with a lattice structure characteristic of the given materials. This particle then acts like a seed or nucleus and grows as other atoms attach themselves. The basic crystalline unit, or unit cell, is repeated.
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Development of a grain structures

In actual solidification, many nuclei form independently throughout the liquid and have random orientations with respect to one another.

Each grows until it begins to interfere with its neighbors.

Since the adjacent lattice structures have different orientations, growth cannot produce a single continuous structure, and a polycrystalline solid is produced.

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Development of a grain structures

The number & size of grains in a metal vary with the rate of nucleation & the rate of growth. Resulting grain structure affects the certain mechanical properties, therefore it is an important property for an engineer to control and specify.

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Thanks

Similarities and Difference Between the FCC and HCP Structure

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