Laser-heated pedestal growth or laser floating zone is a crystal growth technique. A narrow region of a crystal is melted with a powerful CO2 or YAG laser. The laser and hence the floating zone, is moved along the crystal. The molten region melts impure solid at its forward edge and leaves a wake of purer material solidified behind it. This technique for growing crystals from the melt is used in materials research.
Advantages
The main advantages of this technique are the high pulling rates and the possibility of growing materials with very high melting points. In addition, LHPG is a crucible-free technique, which allows single crystals to be grown with high purity and low stress. The geometric shape of the crystals, and the low production cost, make the single-crystal fibers produced by LHPG suitable substitutes for bulk crystals in many devices, especially those that use high melting point materials. However, single-crystal fibers must have equal or superior optical and structural qualities compared to bulk crystals to substitute for them in technological devices. This can be achieved by carefully controlling the growth conditions.
Optical elements
Until 1980, laser-heated crystal growth used only two laser beams focused over the source material. This condition generated a high radial thermal gradient in the molten zone, making the process unstable. Increasing the number of beams to four did not solve the problem, although it improved the growth process. An improvement to the laser-heated crystal growth technique was made by Fejer et al., who incorporated a special optical component known as a reflaxicon, consisting of an inner cone surrounded by a larger coaxial cone section, both with reflecting surfaces. This optical element converts the cylindrical laser beam into a larger diameter hollow cylinder surface. This optical component allows radial distribution of the laser energy over the molten zone, reducing radial thermal gradients. The axial temperature gradient in this technique can go as high as 10000 °C/cm, which is very high when compared to traditional crystal growth techniques.
Convection speed
A feature of the LHPG technique is its high convection speed in the liquid phase due to Marangoni convection. It is possible to see that it spins very fast. Even when it appears to be standing still, it is in fact spinning fast on its axis.
