A crucible for growing silicon ingots may include a vessel having a bottom wall and side walls surrounding an inner portion of the vessel. A coating layer is applied to inner surfaces of the bottom wall and the side walls, the coating layer including a temperature-resistant material compatible with ingot growth from molten silicon such as silicon nitride. A patterned protrusion layer is applied at the inner surface of the bottom wall, which includes a matrix consisting of a temperature-resistant material compatible with ingot growth from molten silicon such as silicon nitride. Furthermore, the patterned protrusion layer includes particles of a nucleation enhancing material such as silica, the particles locally protruding from the matrix. The protruding particles may generate a pattern of multiple nucleation points during crystal growth of the ingot. Due to such multiple nucleation points, a dislocation density defect propagation towards a top may be reduced during crystal growth such that, e.g., solar cells produced with wafers sliced from the resulting ingot may have an improved conversion efficiency.

The present disclosure provides a reaction device for a horizontal boat production method. The device comprises a closed reaction tube, and a horizontal boat container, wherein the horizontal boat container include a plurality of first-layer horizontal boat containers and a second-layer horizontal boat container superposed on a bracket device provided on at least one of the first-layer horizontal boat containers.

A semiconductor synthesizing device comprises a closed reaction tube, a first furnace body and a second furnace body. The reaction tube is arranged with a plurality of horizontal boat containers which include a plurality of first-layer horizontal boat containers and a second-layer horizontal boat container superposed on a bracket device provided on at least one of the first-layer horizontal boat containers. The bracket device is configured to support the second-layer horizontal boat container and provides a gap between the first-layer horizontal boat container and the second-layer horizontal boat container.

Methods for forming single crystal silicon ingots in which plural sample rods are grown from the melt are disclosed. A parameter related to the impurity concentration of the melt or ingot is measured. In some embodiments, the sample rods each have a diameter less than the diameter of the product ingot.

A semiconductor wafer forms on a mold containing a dopant. The dopant dopes a melt region adjacent the mold. There, dopant concentration is higher than in the melt bulk. A wafer starts solidifying. Dopant diffuses poorly in solid semiconductor. After a wafer starts solidifying, dopant can not enter the melt. Afterwards, the concentration of dopant in the melt adjacent the wafer surface is less than what was present where the wafer began to form. New wafer regions grow from a melt region whose dopant concentration lessens over time. This establishes a dopant gradient in the wafer, with higher concentration adjacent the mold. The gradient can be tailored. A gradient gives rise to a field that can function as a drift or back surface field. Solar collectors can have open grid conductors and better optical reflectors on the back surface, made possible by the intrinsic back surface field.

A mould for casting a component in a directional solidification casting process having a preferred direction of grain growth (non-axial <001>) comprises a shell defining a cavity for receiving molten material. The cavity defines a three dimensional shape made up of a finished component geometry portion (42, 43, 44) and a sacrificial geometry portion (45) wherein the sacrificial geometry portion (45) includes a notch (48) which is shaped and positioned so as to, in use, contain high angle grain boundaries between dendritic growth in the preferred direction (non-axial <001>) and dendritic growth in a competing direction to the preferred direction (axial <001>) within the sacrificial geometry portion of a casting solidifying in the mould.

A semi-insulating gallium arsenide single crystal preparation method includes: adding crystal material to a PBN crucible; adding graphite in a quartz cap; loading the hermetically connected quartz cap and quartz crucible into a VGF single crystal furnace in different temperature zones; controlling the temperature zone in which the quartz crucible is located at a temperature of material melting, while controlling the temperature zone is which the quartz cap is located at 1000?50? C.; preserving the temperature of material melting when the temperature zone in which the quartz crucible is located reaches the temperature of material melting, and controlling the temperature zone in which the quartz cap is located at 1200?50? C. and preserving the temperature for 4 to 50 h; lowering a temperature in the temperature zone to 1000?50? C.; and cooling and discharging.

The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing polycrystalline silicon ingot using a crucible in which an oxygen exhaust passage is formed by single crystal or polycrystalline rods, the method including the steps of: manufacturing the single crystal or polycrystalline silicon rods each having the shape of a quadrilateral pillar; putting the single crystal or polycrystalline quadrilateral pillar-shaped silicon rods into the crucible in such a manner as to be arranged close to one another along the inner peripheral surface of the crucible to thus form a space portion inside the single crystal or polycrystalline silicon rods, into which silicon chunks are put, and the oxygen exhaust passages between the inner peripheral surface of the crucible and the respective surfaces of the single crystal or polycrystalline silicon rods oriented toward the inner peripheral surface of the crucible; putting the silicon chunks into the space portion of the crucible; and melting and crystallizing the silicon chunks.

In a method of manufacturing a monocrystalline crystal, in particular a sapphire, a monocrystalline seed crystal is arranged in a base region of a crucible with a cylindrical jacket-shaped crucible wall or forms a base of the crucible and a crystallographic c-axis of the seed crystal is aligned corresponding to a longitudinal axis of the crucible extending in the direction of the top of the crucible wall, whereupon a base material is arranged above the seed crystal in the crucible and melted, crystal growth taking place progressively in the direction of the c-axis by crystallization at a boundary layer between melted base material and seed crystal.

A crucible for growing a single-crystal in which a raw material melt for growing the single-crystal is solidified while being accommodated includes a side wall part configured to surround the raw material melt and a bottom part configured to support the raw material melt while being continuous with the side wall part, in which the side wall part has circumferential length redundancy inside the side wall part in a cross-sectional view. The side wall part has a portion where the circumference length is redundant inside any portion in the cross-sectional view, and when the crucible for growing a single-crystal is cooled in a cooling process after the single-crystal growth, the portion where the circumference length is redundant inside in the cross-sectional view is expanded to an outside of the crucible for growing a single-crystal.