Structure description, interpretation and classification in mineralogical crystallography

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe review is devoted to the start-of-the-art of the description, interpretation and classification of crystal structures in mineralogy. Among methods, the focus is on the atomic packings (including both anion and cation arrays), coordination polyhedra (both cation- and anion-centred), the concept of fundamental building blocks and related ideas, the use of networks, graphs and tilings (space partitions). The basic concepts under discussion in modern structural mineralogy include structure hierarchy (specification and compositional hierarchies are considered separately), modularity (representation of crystal structures as constructed from modules extracted from simple archetype structures) and complexity (with emphasis on static or informational and algorithmic complexities). Short historical notes are given for all of the topics considered.