Typical Ionic Structures

The structures in the table below can be viewed using the Chime plug-in. Try rotating the structures to give the best view. The mode of display (ie ball & stick, space-filling etc) may also be changed in some cases.

The following sphere packings are also available:

• Cubic Close Packing (ccp or fcc)
• Hexagonal Close Packing (hcp)
• Body-centred Cubic (bcc)

Structure	Anion arrangement	Cation arrangement	Anion c.n.	Cation c.n.
Rocksalt NaCl	ccp array of Cl-	Na+ in all octahedral holes	6	6
CsCl	simple cubic array of Cl-	Cs+ in all (cubic) holes	8	8
Fluorite CaF2	F- in all tetrahedral holes	ccp array of Ca2+	4	8
Rutile TiO2	hcp array of O2- (distorted)	Ti4+ in half octahedral holes	3	6
Wurtzite (hexagonal ZnS)	hcp array of S2-	Zn2+ in half tetrahedral holes	4	4
Zinc blende (cubic ZnS)	ccp array of S2-	Zn2+ in half tetrahedral holes	4	4

Perovskite (CaTiO₃) has a structure which is adopted by many ABX₃ compounds.

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