What does "unit cell" mean?

The smallest repeating structure (parallelepiped) of atoms within a crystal, from which the structure of the complete crystal can be inferred.

Unit cell

Common synonyms include: basic cell based, cell parameters, crystal related, elementary, lattice cell, lattice parameters.

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
The smallest repeating structure (parallelepiped) of atoms within a crystal, from which the structure of the complete crystal can be inferred.
"The first task for a crystallographer is to establish the shape of the unit cell."
2
the smallest group of atoms or molecules whose repetition at regular intervals in three dimensions produces the lattices of a crystal wordnet

"The first task for a crystallographer is to establish the shape of the unit cell."