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Materials Science and Engineering: How would you determine whether to use the ionic radius or the covalent/atomic radius to calculate the unit cell edge length and density for materials with the zincblende structure? Please explain your answer.
We have to use the Ionic radius for the zinc blende structure because, because it is not a single atom where you can use the atomic radius, also in order to use a covalent radius they shall be bounded by a covalent bond which is not true to our zinc sulfate case. Zinc blende is formed from an ionic bond between sulfur and zinc.
also, note that the ionic radius for Zn2+ is 74 pm and for S2- is 190pm. Therefore the ratio between cationic and anionic radii in zinc blend is 0.39 (74pm/190 pm) . This suggests a tetrahedral ion arrangement and four nearest neighbors from standard crystal structure prediction tables. Therefore, four sulfur atoms surround each zinc atom and four zinc atoms surround each sulfur atom. The coordination number, the number of-of electron pairs donated to a metal by its ligands, for both zinc an sulfur is four. The difference between wurtzite and zincblende lies in the different arrangements of layers of ions