Growth of homogeneous In1-xGaxSb crystals by the graded solute concentration method

We propose a new crystal growth method named "the graded solute concentrati on method" for obtaining homogeneous mixed crystals from their melts in the presence of residual acceleration of the order of 10(-3)-10(-4) G in micro gravity. In this method, the feed with preinstalled solute concentration pr ofile is used for compensating solute loss at the solid-liquid (S/L) interf ace due to convection caused by the residual acceleration. By the prelimina ry ground-based experiments using capillary tubes with a 1.5 mm bore, we ob tained homogeneous In0.4Ga0.6Sb and In0.2Ga0.8Sb crystals. These results sh ow the validity of the proposed method. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.