Kinetic and surface energy effects during the growth of partially faceted single crystals from the melt
by
Simon Brandon
Department of Chemical Engineering, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel
Coauthors: Oleg Weinstein

Surfaces of semiconductors, oxides, and other materials may exhibit partial faceting under realistic bulk crystal growth conditions. A characteristic feature of facets appearing, during melt growth, along the liquid/solid interface is their temperature which is reduced (undercooled) below the melting point of the growing material. The local undercooling along facets can be attributed to anisotropy in interfacial energy and/or anisotropy in interfacial attachment kinetics. Until now it has been assumed that undercooling, along facets appearing on the melt/crystal interface of large melt growth systems, is primarily due to interfacial attachment kinetics. We examine the validity of this assumption by investigating the role that surface energy plays in systems exhibiting partially facetted melt/crystal interfaces. Issues to be discussed include minimum facet size both in dislocation-free and in dislocation-driven growth and energy effects near facet edges. In addition to discussing surface energy, we will describe our numerical approach for modeling dynamics of evolving facets under conditions where surface energy effects are unimportant. Both two-and-three-dimensional models of confined melt growth will be presented. Both nano and macro-scale interfacial features captured by these techniques prove to be consistent with the physics imposed by the choice of combined kinetic models.

Date received: February 29, 2004

Copyright © 2004 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cakt-81.