Semiconductor Crystal Growth
Semiconductor crystal growth techniques — Czochralski pulling, Bridgman-Stockbarger, molecular beam epitaxy, and hydride vapor phase epitaxy — produce single-crystal and epitaxial semiconductor materials with controlled doping, crystallographic orientation, and defect density. As a hard skill it requires understanding phase diagrams and segregation coefficients, controlling thermal gradients and growth rates to minimize dislocations, and characterizing grown crystals with XRD, etch-pit counting, and Hall measurements. Battery researchers apply crystal growth techniques when producing model electrode or solid electrolyte single crystals for fundamental transport and interface studies that would be obscured by grain boundaries in polycrystalline samples.
