On the Description of Complex Inorganic Crystal Structures

To describe a structure is to describe chemistry. A description of structure should be simple yet also open up ways for an understanding of complex structures and their properties. Such interrelationships are gained on inspection and discussion of structures in models of interpenetrating partial structures and on application of symmetry operations to whole structures. Transition regions between interpenetrating partial structures can be approximated to periodic minimal surfaces. Chemical reactions, e.g. in ion‐exchange, in heterogeneous catalysis, or in molecular separations in complicated zeolites will take place on these minimal surfaces.