Crystal Lattice Structures: Index by Pearson Symbol

The Pearson symbol indicates the crystal symmetry and the number of atoms in the unit cell. For example, NaCl has a face-centered (F) cubic (c) structure with 8 atoms in the cube, so it is designated cF8. Cinnabar has 6 atoms in a hexagonal (h) primitive (P) cell, so it is designated hP6. Note that the Pearson symbol does not necessarily specify a unique structure (e.g., cF8).
You will notice a striking similarity between the Pearson symbol categories and the space group categories.

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Pearson Symbol Categories:

a (asymmetric) type	m (monoclinic) type	o (orthorhombic) type
t (tetragonal) type	h (hexagonal and rhombohedral) type	c (cubic) type

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Go back to Crystal Lattice Structure page.

Structures indexed by: Strukturbericht Designation Space Group Prototype

This is a mirror of an old page created at the Naval Research Laboratory Center for Computational Materials Science The maintained successor is hosted at http://www.aflowlib.org/CrystalDatabase/ and published as M. Mehl et al., Comput. Mater. Sci. 136 (Supp.), S1-S828 (2017).