page_title: Geometrical frustration
section_title: Dense structures and tetrahedral packings
hierarchical_section_title: Geometrical frustration / Geometric frustration without lattice / Dense structures and tetrahedral packings
caption_attribution_description: English: Twenty tetrahedra with a common vertex built an imperfect icosahedron Français&#160;: Vingt tetrahèdres avec un sommet commun forment un icosaèdre imparfait
context_page_description: In condensed matter physics, the term geometrical frustration refers to a phenomenon, where atoms tend to stick to non-trivial positions or where, on a regular crystal lattice, conflicting inter-atomic forces lead to quite complex structures. As a consequence of the frustration in the geometry or in the forces, a plenitude of distinct ground states may result at zero temperature, and usual thermal ordering may be suppressed at higher temperatures. Much studied examples are amorphous materials, glasses, or dilute magnets.
  The term frustration, in the context of magnetic systems, has been introduced by Gerard Toulouse. Indeed, frustrated magnetic systems had been studied even before. Early work includes a study of the Ising model on a triangular lattice with nearest-neighbor spins coupled antiferromagnetically, by G. H. Wannier, published in 1950. Related features occur in magnets with competing interactions, where both ferromagnetic as well as antiferromagnetic couplings between pairs of spins or magnetic moments are present, with the type of interaction depending on the separation distance of the spins.
context_section_description: The stability of metals is a longstanding question of solid state physics, which can only be understood in the quantum mechanical framework by properly taking into account the interaction between the positively charged ions and the valence and conduction electrons. It is nevertheless possible to use a very simplified picture of metallic bonding and only keeps an isotropic type of interactions, leading to structures which can be represented as densely packed spheres. And indeed the crystalline simple metal structures are often either close packed face-centered cubic (fcc) or hexagonal close packing (hcp) lattices. Up to some extent amorphous metals and quasicrystals can also be modeled by close packing of spheres. The local atomic order is well modeled by a close packing of tetrahedra, leading to an imperfect icosahedral order.
  A regular tetrahedron is the densest configuration for the packing of four equal spheres. The dense random packing of hard spheres problem can thus be mapped on the tetrahedral packing problem. It is a practical exercise to try to pack table tennis balls in order to form only tetrahedral configurations. One starts with four balls arranged as a perfect tetrahedron, and try to add new spheres, while forming new tetrahedra. The next solution, with five balls, is trivially two tetrahedra sharing a common face; note that already with this solution, the fcc structure, which contains individual tetrahedral holes, does not show such a configuration (the tetrahedra share edges, not faces). With six balls, three regular tetrahedra are built, and the cluster is incompatible with all compact crystalline structures (fcc and hcp). Adding a seventh sphere gives a new cluster consisting in two "axial" balls touching each other and five others touching the latter two balls, the outer shape being an almost regular pentagonal bi-pyramid. However, we are facing now a real packing problem, analogous to the one encountered above with the pentagonal tiling in two dimensions. The dihedral angle of a tetrahedron is not commensurable with 2π; consequently, a hole remains between two faces of neighboring tetrahedra. As a consequence, a perfect tiling of the Euclidean space R³ is impossible with regular tetrahedra. The frustration has a topological character: it is impossible to fill Euclidean space with tetrahedra, even severely distorted, if we impose that a constant number of tetrahedra (here five) share a common edge.
  The next step is crucial: the search for an unfrustrated structure by allowing for curvature in the space, in order for the local configurations to propagate identically and without defects throughout the whole space.
caption: Tetrahedral packing: The dihedral angle of a tetrahedron is not commensurable with 2π; consequently, a hole remains between two faces of a packing of five tetrahedra with a common edge. A packing of twenty tetrahedra with a common vertex in such a way that the twelve outer vertices form an irregular icosahedron
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