This book is the second in a series of scientific textbooks designed to
cover advances in selected research fields from a basic and general
viewpoint, so that only limited knowledge is required to understand the
significance of recent developments. Further assistance for the
non-specialist is provided by the summary of abstracts in Part 2, which
includes many of the major papers published in the research field.
Crystal Growth of Semiconductor Materials has been the subject of
numerous books and reviews and the fundamental principles are now
well-established. We are concerned chiefly with the deposition of atoms
onto a suitable surface - crystal growth - and the generation of faults
in the atomic structure during growth and subsequent cooling to room
temperature - crystal defect structure. In this book I have attempted to
show that whilst the fundamentals of these processes are relatively
simple, the complexities of the interactions involved and the
individuality of different materials systems and growth processes have
ensured that experimentally verifiable predictions from scientific
principles have met with only limited success - good crystal growth
remains an art. However, recent advances, which include the reduction of
growth temperatures, the reduction or elimination of reactant transport
variables and the use of better-controlled energy sources to promote
specific reactions, are leading to simplified growth systems.
