Video Transcript
The following figure shows five silicon atoms. Only electrons in the outer shells of the atoms are shown. Do these atoms form a lattice?
Looking at these five atoms, notice that only one of them, the one in the center, has other silicon atoms above and below it and on either one of its sides. If this is a lattice then, this atom in the center is the only one that will display the bulk properties of that lattice. There’s actually an even stronger reason though that these atoms do not form a lattice. Notice that the electron shells of adjacent atoms in this arrangement do not overlap. Therefore, no electron sharing takes place, and these atoms are not bound together with one another.
Without these bonds, we can more accurately think of these silicon atoms simply as five individual atoms. Since they don’t share bonds, they are not joined together. And our answer, therefore, is that these five silicon atoms do not form a lattice.
