Micro- and noncrystalline materials
The crystalline state is characterized by a high degree of internal order. There are two types of order that we will discuss here. One is chemical order, which consists of the connectivity (bond lengths and bond angles) and stoichiometry in organic and many inorganic molecules, or just stoichiometry in minerals, metals, and other such materials. Some degree of chemical ordering exists for any molecule consisting of more than one atom, and the molecular structure of chemically simple gas molecules can be determined by gaseous electron diffraction or by high-resolution infrared spectroscopy. The second type of order to be discussed is geometrical order, which is the regular arrangement of entities in space such as in cubes, cylinders, coiled coils, and many other arrangements. For a compound to be crystalline it is necessary for the geometrical order of the individual entities (which must each have the same overall conformation) to extend indefinitely (that is, apparently infinitely) in three dimensions such that a three-dimensional repeat unit can be defined from diffraction data. Single crystals of quartz, diamond, silicon, or potassium dihydrogen phosphate can be grown to be as large as six or more inches across. Imagine how many atoms or ions must be identically arranged to create such macroscopic perfection! Sometimes, however, this geometrical order does not extend very far, and microarrays of molecules or ions, while themselves ordered, are disordered with respect to each other on a macroscopic scale. In such a case the three-dimensional order does not extend far enough to give a sharp diffraction pattern. The crystal quality is then described as “poor” or the crystal is considered to be microcrystalline, as in the naturally occurring clay minerals. On the other hand, in certain solid materials the spatial extent of geometrical order may be less than three-dimensional, and this reduced order gives rise to interesting properties. For example, the geometrical order may exist only in two dimensions; this is the case for mica and graphite, which consist of planar structures with much weaker forces between the layers so that cleavage and slippage are readily observed.