Body Centered Cubic
In the Body Centered Cubic (BCC) unit
cell there is one host atom (lattice point) at each corner of the cube
and one host atom in the center of the cube: Z = 2. Each corner atom touches
the central atom along the body diagonal of the cube, and it is
easy to show by that the unit cell edge, an irrational number, is about
2.3r. Thus, the corner atoms do not touch one another.
(crossed stereo pair)
The packing efficiency in this lattice can be shown to be about 68%, much
higher than the packing efficiency in a simple cubic lattice.
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