K. Sankaranarayanan

Alloy Semiconductor Crystal Growth Under Microgravity

Microgravity studies on the dissolution and crystallization of InxGa1‐xSb have been done using a sandwich combination of InSb and GaSb as the starting material using the Chinese recoverable satellite. The same type of experiment was performed under 1G gravity condition for comparison. From these experiments and the numerical simulation, it is found that the shape of the solid/liquid interface and composition profile in the solution was found to be significantly affected by gravity. GaSb seed was dissolved faster than GaSb feed even though the GaSb feed temperature was higher than that of GaSb seed temperature. These results clearly indicate that solute transport due to gravity affects dissolution and growth processes of alloy semiconductor bulk crystals.