Morphogenesis of crystal structures in the discrete modeling of packings

Within the framework of the discrete modeling of molecular packings, a metric approach to the investigation of the mechanisms of crystal formation is proposed. This method is based on the construction of a combination of polyhedra in a space in which the space division into polyhedra (or the periodic packing of polyhedra) is specified by the multistage addition to the initial “seeding” polyhedron set of this division (packing) of the adjacent polyhedra. Crystal growth is modeled using the constructions of bounding boxes in the division of the plane into polyominoes and the three-dimensional space, into polycubes. The formation of phenomenological polygons (polyhedra) in the growth of periodic structures is revealed and theoretically grounded.