Crystal growth History: Theory and melt growth processes

Abstract

This article gives a brief overview of the field of crystal growth over several centuries-- in fact when it wasn’t a field per se, but a collection of independent scientific studies and commercial ventures undertaken by scientists and engineers from many different disciplines. This all changed after WWII with the development of semiconductor and optical devices requiring high quality single crystals. As a result, the field of crystal growth became an independent entity with societies and its own journal. What is covered here are some of the theoretical milestones along the way towards our current highly sophisticated understanding of crystallization mechanisms, crystalline perfection and some of the methods used to grow large single crystals of many different classes of materials.