The face centered cubic structure has atoms located at each of the corners and the centers of all the cubic faces (left image below). Each of the corner atoms is the corner of another cube so the corner atoms are shared among eight unit cells. Additionally, each of its six face centered atoms is shared with an adjacent atom. Since 12 of its atoms are shared, it is said to have a coordination number of 12. The fcc unit cell consists of a net total of four atoms; eight eighths from corners atoms and six halves of the face atoms as shown in the middle image above. The image below highlights a unit cell in a larger section of the lattice.

In the fcc structure (and the hcp structure) the atoms can pack closer together than they can in the bcc structure. The atoms from one layer nest themselves in the empty space between the atoms of the adjacent layer. To picture packing arrangement, imagine a box filled with a layer of balls that are aligned in columns and rows. When a few additional balls are tossed in the box, they will not balance directly on top of the balls in the first layer but instead will come to rest in the pocket created between four balls of the bottom layer. As more balls are added they will pack together to fill up all the pockets. The packing factor (the volume of atoms in a cell per the total volume of a cell) is 0.74 for fcc crystals. Some of the metals that have the fcc structure include aluminum, copper, gold, iridium, lead, nickel, platinum and silver.

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