Cubic Crystal System - Cubic Space Groups

Cubic Space Groups

The three Bravais lattices which form cubic crystal systems are:

The primitive cubic system (cP) consists of one lattice point on each corner of the cube. Each atom at a lattice point is then shared equally between eight adjacent cubes, and the unit cell therefore contains in total one atom (1⁄₈ × 8).
The body-centered cubic system (cI) has one lattice point in the center of the unit cell in addition to the eight corner points. It has a net total of 2 lattice points per unit cell (1⁄₈ × 8 + 1).
The face-centered cubic system (cF) has lattice points on the faces of the cube, that each gives exactly one half contribution, in addition to the corner lattice points, giving a total of 4 lattice points per unit cell (1⁄₈ × 8 from the corners plus 1⁄₂ × 6 from the faces).

The face-centered cubic system is closely related to the hexagonal close packed system, and the two systems differ only in the relative placements of their hexagonal layers. The plane of a face-centered cubic system is a hexagonal grid.

Attempting to create a C-centered cubic crystal system (i.e., putting an extra lattice point in the center of each horizontal face) would result in a simple tetragonal Bravais lattice.