Correlation Between Crystal Structure, Relative Growth Rates and Evolution of Crystal Surfaces

Abstract

According to most crystal growth theories, the as grown crystal morphology is dominated by the slow-growing faces and the fast-growing faces may grow out and not be represented in the final crystal habit. In this paper a brief survey is given of the recently developed correlation between the evolution of both fast- and slow-growing surfaces, their relative growth rates, and thee crystallographic structure of crystal. It is shown that even the fast-growing faces may increase their sizes. On the other hand, the slow-growing faces may decrease and, in consequence, disappear from crystal morphology. Such a behaviour of slow- and fast-growing surfaces influences the growth and evolution of both low- and high-index faces.