MSE 230

Assignment 3 Solutions

Fall 2013

Problem 1.

Origin
z

[1 2 1]

(1 1 1)

y
x
[1 0 1]

[2 0 1]

(2 0 2)

(1 2 1)

2.*
a) Applying the cross to the two directions gives you a new direction that is
perpendicular to both directions:

[3 1 2] [11 1] [1 5 4]
For cubic structures, 1 5 4 is perpendicular to (1 5 4) . I used the drawing below to illustrate
this point in class, just change the directions to those used in this problem and the same thing
applies.

( 11 1 )

[11 1]

You can check your answer using the dot product. If the direction lies with a given plane
the dot product is equal to zero.
[3 1 2] [1 5 4] = - 3 - 5 + 8 = 0
[1 1 1 ] [1 5 4] = -1+ 5 - 4 = 0

b) In this case we use the definition of the dot product: u v = u v cos where theta is the angle
between vectors u and v.

[3 1 2] [11 1] = 0 = 14 3 cos
cos = 0 = 90

3. The (011) is shown in the cube below. Note that the plane contains cube edges <100>, cube
face diagonals <110> and cube body diagonals <111>. We can determine the specific directions
within each family of directions from the drawing. We have chose the correct directions if the
dot product of the direction with [011] equals zero (e.g., the directions lies within the (011)
plane.

[1 0 0]

[0 1 1]

[1 1 1]

[1 0 0]

[0 1 1]

[1 1 1]
[1 1 1]
[1 1 1]

x
4.
To get started, recall that the interplanar spacing (d) gets larger as the diffraction angle
gets smaller. So asking for reflections with a d-spacing larger then 0.15 nm down the number of
peaks we are looking for. Further, specifying a FCC structure means that the Miller index values
for h, k and l are either all odd or all even. With this in mind, the solution is below.

d hkl =

Plane

100
110
111
200
210
211
220
300
221

a
2

h +k +l

0.15nm <

h 2 + k 2 + l2

1
2
3
2
5
6
8
9
too large, >3

0.45 nm
2

h +k +l

h 2 + k 2 + l2 3

FCC/h,k,l =
all odd, all even?
No
No
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
No

d(nm)

2 from n = 2dsin

0.26
0.225

34.5
40.0

0.16

57.9

(111)

(200)

(220)

10

20

40

30

50

60

2
5. a) Thermal expansion during heating increases the d-spacing between planes of atoms.
Referring to Braggs law, =2dsin, increasing d decreases sin. This will cause the xray peaks to shift to slightly lower values of 2.
b) When T>Tm iron melts to form a liquid (Tm(iron)=1538C). Liquids are amorphous
(no long range order), and long range ordering is required to form sharp peaks.