The Face-Centered Cubic Network

The face-centered cubic arrangement is another way of stacking close-packed nets. Try rotating the structure until you see these layers of atoms. The first two nets in the stack are just as in the hexagonal close-packed pattern (AB). The third layer, though, is placed so that its points lie over different triangles in the second layer than those of the first layer. The fourth layer is then a repeat of the first, such that the repeating pattern is …ABCABCABC….