Single-crystal production equipment and single-crystal production method
AssigneeCrystal Systems, Inc.
InventorIsamu Shindo
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Produced is a large single crystal with no crystal grain boundary, which is a high-quality single crystal that has a uniform composition in both the vertical and horizontal directions at an optimum dopant concentration and contains only a small number of negative crystals and exsolution lamellae. A single-crystal production equipment includes at least: a quartz crucible in which a seed crystal is placed on its bottom; a powder raw material supply apparatus which supplies a powder raw material into the quartz crucible; and an infrared ray irradiation apparatus which applies an infrared ray to the powder raw material supplied into the quartz crucible from the powder raw material supply apparatus.
Claims26
A single-crystal production equipment comprising, at least:
- a quartz crucible in which a seed crystal is placed on its bottom;
- a powder raw material supply apparatus which supplies a powder raw material into said quartz crucible;
- an infrared ray irradiation apparatus positioned to irradiate said powder raw material supplied into said quartz crucible from said powder raw material supply apparatus with an infrared ray;
- and
- an infrared ray local irradiation apparatus which is separate from said infrared ray irradiation apparatus,
- said single-crystal production equipment being configured to produce a single crystal in said quartz crucible by applying said infrared ray into said quartz crucible from said infrared ray irradiation apparatus and thereby melting and solidifying said powder raw material,
- wherein said single-crystal production equipment is configured such that:
- said supplied powder raw material is irradiated with said infrared ray by said infrared ray irradiation apparatus while being supplied into said quartz crucible from said powder raw material supply apparatus,
- said powder raw material supply apparatus continuously supplies said powder raw material into said quartz crucible in accordance with an amount of melted powder raw material being solidified, and
- said infrared ray local irradiation apparatus is positioned to apply an infrared ray only to a periphery of a melt formed in said quartz crucible and thereby increases a temperature in a vicinity of the periphery of said melt formed in said quartz crucible to be higher than a temperature of an entirety of said melt in said quartz crucible.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.