Crystal growth in condensed phase and phase diagrams

The crystal growth techniques used in industry usually take place in melt and more than 80% of the crystals produced have a congruent melting composition. However, the complexity of single-crystal matrices is constantly increasing (4 constituents or even more) and in these multi-constituent systems, very few are fully stoichiometric compounds with a congruent melting composition. Whatever the technique used, to master the growth process, a required first step is to know the stability domain of the solid and liquid phases concerned in a temperature-pressure-composition coordinate system. The choice of growth technique to be implemented will depend primarily on the thermodynamic parameters and the nucleation conditions which will result in crystal generation