Dr. Michael Katz - Porous Materials

Miller Planes

Below you will find a Miller plane viewer. Miller planes can be viewed as planes that slice through a unit cell. It can be used to visualize crystal growth directions. It can also be used to consider how X-ray "diffraction" (actually scattering) occurs off of a plane. We define each plane using a set of indices, h, k, and l. Each index represents the inverse of how far along a unit cell the plane passes through along x, y, and z respectively. For example, if h = 1, then the plane intersects the x-axis at a. Furthermore, if h = 2, then the plane intersects the x-axis at half of a (1/h = 1/2). We label planes as "(h k l)". So the plane (1 1 0) intesects the x-axis at a, the y-axis at b, and it runs parallel to the z-axis 1/l = 1/0 = ∞ ).

Use the viewer below to explore the viewer. Be careful with negative values of h, k, and l.