Beschrijving

In the first contribution to this volume we read that the world-wide production of single- crystal silicon amounts to some 2000 metric tons per year. Given the size of present-day silicon-crystals, this number is equivalent to 100000 silicon-crystals grown every year by either the Czochralski (80%) or the floating-zone (20%) technique. But, to the best of my knowledge, no coherent and comprehensive article has been written that deals with the art and science , as well as the practical and technical aspects of growing silicon- crystals by the Czochralski technique. The same could be said about the floating-zone technique were it not for the review article by W. Dietze, W. Keller and A. Miihlbauer which was published in the preceding Volume 5 ( Silicon ) of this series (and for a monograph by two of the above authors published about the same time). As editor of this volume I am very glad to have succeeded in persuading two scien- tists, W. Zulehner and D. Huber, of Wacker-Chemitronic GmbH – the world’s largest producer of silicon-crystals – to write a comprehensive article about the practical and scientific aspects of growing silicon-crystals by the Czochralski method and about silicon- wafer manufacture. I am sure that many scientists or engineers who work with silicon- crystals -be it in the laboratory or in a production environment – will profit from the first article in this volume.