The perovskite structure is adopted by many oxides with formula ABO3 and is very versatile having many useful technological applications such as ferroelectrics, catalysts, sensors and superconductors.
The general crystal structure can be thought of as a body centered cubic (BCC) lattice with A ion (+2) at the centre surrounded by eight B ions (+4), each at the corner, and twelve O ions (-2), each occupies the midpoint of the edge. Similarly, the structure can be thought of as a face centered cubic (FCC) lattice with B ion at the centre surround by six O ions, each at a face centre, and eight A ions, each at the corner.
The packing of the ions can be thought of the A and O ions together form a cubic close packed array, where the B ions occupy a quarter of the octahedral holes.
A crystal structure is composed of a unit cell, a set of atoms arranged in a particular way; which is periodically repeated in three dimensions on a lattice.
The crystal structure of a material is often discussed in terms of its unit cell.
The space group of the crystal structure is composed of the translational symmetry operations in addition to the operations of the point group.