Manufacture
In the case of silicon and metal single crystal fabrication the techniques used involve highly controlled and therefore relatively slow crystallization.
Specific techniques to produce large single crystals (aka boules) include the Czochralski process and the Bridgman technique. Other less exotic methods of crystallization may be used, depending on the physical properties of the substance, including hydrothermal synthesis, sublimation, or simply solvent based crystallization.
A different technology to create single crystalline materials is called epitaxy. As of 2009, this process is used to deposit very thin (micrometre to nanometer scale) layers of the same or different materials on the surface of an existing single crystal. Applications of this technique lie in the areas of semiconductor production, with potential uses in other nanotechnological fields and catalysis.
Read more about this topic: Single Crystal
Famous quotes containing the word manufacture:
“I believe that the miseries consequent on the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors are so great as imperiously to command the attention of all dedicated lives; and that while the abolition of American slavery was numerically first, the abolition of the liquor traffic is not morally second.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“The profession of magician, is one of the most perilous and arduous specialisations of the imagination. On the one hand there is the hostility of God and the police to be guarded against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as deep as poetry, as ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the manufacture of high explosives, and as delicate as the trade in narcotics.”
—William Bolitho (1890–1930)
“Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)