The fundamental structural unit of industrial silicate minerals is the silica tetrahedron. Quartz is just a densely packed arrangement of these tetrahedra, as depicted in Figure 3.
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| Quartz |
Extended in three dimensions, this structure provides the characteristic hardness and inertness of quartz. The different forms of crystalline silica − most commonly quartz, cristobalite, and tridymite − differ mainly in the relative orientation of adjacent tetrahedra and the shape of voids created within a given plane.
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