Structure hierarchy and classification of microscopic structures. (IMAGE)
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In terms of the length scale of structural features, material structure can be classified into macroscopic, mesoscopic, and microscopic structures. And the microscopic structure of materials can be plausibly categorized into six types: (1) crystalline structures possessing a long-range order of atoms, (2) magnetic structures with long-range order of spin moments in crystalline materials, (3) aperiodic structures with long-range organized atom modulations from a crystalline materials, (4) defect structures with long-range random or nonrandom distributions of atomic defects in crystalline materials, (5) local structures representing local-coordination environments of atoms in the range of several coordination shells, and (6) electronic structures representing electron density distributions in real space (or position space) and those representing electron distributions in momentum space (or k-space). This classification is not too much rigorous, while it benefits the investigations of functional motifs and structure-property relationships. (Pink balls in red square represent the atoms in a repeat unit cell; black arrow represents spin moments. The blue lines highlight the relative positions of atoms.)
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