Equilibrium crystal growth from substrate confined liquid
First Claim
1. A method for in situ growth of an array of single crystals from nonwetting material deposited on an inert substrate comprising the steps ofpreparing a surface of said substrate with an array of concavities which, will the substrate uniformly heated, stably contain liquid material at the substrate temperature by the combined effects of surface tension and geometry, said array of concavities having a field between every pair of concavities having a width that is small relative to the smallest dimension of the concavities, said array having a geometry that maximizes the total concavity area, which is large relative to the total field area,depositing said material from which said crystals are to be grown on said prepared surface of said substrate to at least partially fill said concavities,chemically removing deposited material from said field without a mask, andcrystallizing a single crystal from said material in each concavity with the substrate uniformly heated and said material at the same temperature.
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Abstract
A method for in situ growth of an array of single crystals from material deposited on an inert substrate is comprised of (1.0) preparing a surface of the substrate with a closely packed array of concavities which stably contain liquid material by the combined effects of surface tension and geometry, (2.0) depositing the material from which the crystals are to be grown on the prepared surface of the substrate to at least partially fill the concavities, (3.0) removing deposited material from the field by evaporation etching after the next step, and (4.0) crystallizing the material remaining in each concavity. The process may be followed by a further step (5.0) of recrystallizing the material to assure a single crystal in each concavity free of any defects, such as defects resulting from etching. Crystallization may be effected by isothermally heating the substrate at a liquid temperature of the deposited material and changing the composition of the deposited material, and deposited material may be removed from the field during the process of crystallizing the material. The concavities are preferably provided as densely packed polygons plasma etched with vertical walls.
90 Citations
12 Claims
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1. A method for in situ growth of an array of single crystals from nonwetting material deposited on an inert substrate comprising the steps of
preparing a surface of said substrate with an array of concavities which, will the substrate uniformly heated, stably contain liquid material at the substrate temperature by the combined effects of surface tension and geometry, said array of concavities having a field between every pair of concavities having a width that is small relative to the smallest dimension of the concavities, said array having a geometry that maximizes the total concavity area, which is large relative to the total field area, depositing said material from which said crystals are to be grown on said prepared surface of said substrate to at least partially fill said concavities, chemically removing deposited material from said field without a mask, and crystallizing a single crystal from said material in each concavity with the substrate uniformly heated and said material at the same temperature.
Specification