Silicon melt density - problems of Archimedean technique

Si melt density has been found to have the maximum value around 2.54 g/cm(3 ) at 24 degreesC above the melting point, like H2O. The anomalous variation near the melting point reported by Sasaki et al. [1] has been found to be due to the melt climbing to the bob when just touching the Si melt surface. It is needed to wait more than 2h to get constant values. We used fresh bo bs to measure one point temperature in order to eliminate the bob thickness variations. The density variations are discussed in terms of weight signal variations. Tentative density values are proposed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.