Tetragonal crystal system

An example of the tetragonal crystals, wulfenite
Two different views (top down and from the side) of the unit cell of tP30-CrFe (σ-phase Frank–Kasper structure) that show its different side lengths, making this structure a member of the tetragonal crystal system.

In crystallography, the tetragonal crystal system is one of the 7 crystal systems. Tetragonal crystal lattices result from stretching a cubic lattice along one of its lattice vectors, so that the cube becomes a rectangular prism with a square base (a by a) and height (c, which is different from a).

Bravais lattices

There are two tetragonal Bravais lattices: the primitive tetragonal and the body-centered tetragonal.

The body-centered tetragonal lattice is equivalent to the primitive tetragonal lattice with a smaller unit cell, while the face-centered tetragonal lattice is equivalent to the body-centered tetragonal lattice with a smaller unit cell.

Crystal classes

The point groups that fall under this crystal system are listed below, followed by their representations in international notation, Schoenflies notation, orbifold notation, Coxeter notation and mineral examples.

In two dimensions

There is only one tetragonal Bravais lattice in two dimensions: the square lattice.

See also

References

Uses material from the Wikipedia article Tetragonal crystal system, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.