Modelling of the pedestal growth of silicon crystals

The pedestal method is an alternative to the well-known floating zone method, both of which are performed with high-frequency electromagnetic heating. Unlike the floating zone method, in the pedestal method a single crystal is pulled upwards from the melt. It allows one to lower feed rod quality requirements and simplify the process control due to the absence of open melting front. As the pedestal method has not been widely used in industry for silicon crystals, its development requires extensive numerical modelling. The present work describes application of the previously created mathematical model for crystals with diameters higher than it is currently possible in the experimental setup, as well as for the cone growth phase. Supplementary free surface heating, that prevents melt centre freezing during the seeding phase, has been added at the beginning of cone phase. After multiple sets of simulations, an optimal scheme of heating control for cone growth was proposed.

Single-Crystal Growth of Sr2RuO4 by the Floating-Zone Method Using an Infrared Image Furnace with Improved Halogen Lamps

We report the single-crystal growth of the unconventional superconductor Sr2RuO4, on which research has reached a turning point recently. In order to optimize the quality of crystals grown by the floating-zone method using an infrared image furnace, we focus on an improvement of the structure of the filament in the halogen lamps. By reducing the thickness of the total filament, the form of the molten zone was narrowed. More importantly, the molten zone was observed to be more stable during the growth process. Finally, we obtained the crystals with a length of 12 cm. Additionally, the grown crystal has high quality, displaying the 1.5 K transition temperature expected only for the purest crystals. We also discuss the availability of the newly developed halogen lamps.