atomic plane

When the crystal is regarded as a periodic stacking of planar array of atoms, a virtual plane composed of the atoms is called an atomic plane. In a crystal, many atomic planes with different orientations are considered. These planes are identified with the Miller index as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. As an example, various atomic planes of the body-centered cubic structure are shown together with the Miller indices identifying those planes. It is noted that high-order planes sometimes do not contain atoms, as seen in the bottom center and bottom right figures.

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