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Position of interface between silicon melt and growing ribbon of silicon measured with aid of reflected ultrasound, according to proposal. Reflections reveal characteristics of ribbon and melt. Ultrasound pulses travel through rods to silicon ribbon growing by dendritic-web process. Rods return reflections of pulses to sonic transducers. Isolate transducers thermally, but not acoustically, from hot silicon melt.
Dopant incorporated feed pellets to maintain required concentration. Technique of continuous replenishment of dopant in silicon melt helps ensure correct resistivity in solid silicon grown from melt. Technique used in dendritic-web growth process in which ribbon of silicon continously pulled from molten material. Providing uniform doping and resistivity in ribbon technique enables production of high-quality silicon ribbon at high yields for use in semiconductor devices.
Compact equipment yields high-quality solar cells. Computer controls pulses of excimer laser and movement of silcon wafer. Mirrors direct laser beam to wafer. Lenses focus beam to small spot on surface. Process suitable for silicon made by dendritic-web-growth process.
Device mechanically stabilizes buttons from which silicon ribbons grown by dendritic-web process. Eliminates tendency for button to tip and interrupt pull because of asymmetry. Silicon seed hangs from holder through stabilizing tube. While button growing, tube elevated above melt surface. When ready for pulling of ribbon, tube comes to rest on button and prevents tipping. Large button used. Even if button assumes highly-asymmetrical weight distrubtion in early stages of growth, little danger of tipping and breakage of nascent ribbon.
The effects of undercooling on the thermal behavior and structure of Ni-Sn alloys are investigated. Hypoeutectic (Ni-25 wt pct Sn) and eutectic (Ni-32.5 wt pct Sn) compositions of the Ni-Sn alloy were undercooled using a levitation melting with glass encasement technique, and the recalescence of these alloys was measured using a high speed temperature sensing device and a digital oscilloscope. It is observed that in both samples the total solidification and recalescence times decrease with increasing undercooling; the volume fraction of normal lamellar eutectic decreases with increasing undercooling; and in the hypoeutectic sample, the morphology of the primary phase changes from dendritic to spherical with increasing undercooling.
The undercoolings of pure Nb and Nb-Ge alloys are examined using the 100-m drop tube of the Marshall Space Flight Center. The temperatures of the samples prior to release were measured, and IR detectors were utilized to monitor recalescence from solidification. It is observed that the Nb and Nb-Ge samples undercooled to the homogeneous nucleation limit. The data reveal that all the samples displayed a dendritic primary phase, except for alloys nucleating in the beta-phase field, which had a cellular phase. The composition of these phases are studied using EDXA; it is detected that the composition of the phases corresponds to the Jorda (1978) phase diagram.
Hypoeutectic, eutectic, and hypereutectic nickel-molybdenum alloys were rapidly solidified by both bulk undercooling and melt spinning techniques. Alloys were undercooled in both electromagnetic levitation and differential thermal analysis equipment. The rate of recalescence depended upon the degree of initial undercooling and the nature (faceted or nonfaceted) of the primary nucleating phase. Alloy melts were observed to undercool more in the presence of primary Beta (NiMo intermetallic) phase than in gamma (fcc solid solution) phase. Melt spinning resulted in an extension of molybdenum solid solubility in gamma nickel, from 28 to 37.5 at. pct Mo. Although the microstructures observed by undercooling and melt spinning were similar, the microsegregation pattern across the gamma dendries was different. The range of microstructures evolved was analyzed in terms of the nature of the primary phase to nucleate, its subsequent dendritic growth, coarsening and fragmentation, and final solidification of interfenderitic liquid.
The formation of needle-crystal dendrites from an undercooled melt is investigated analytically, applying the method of Caroli et al. (1986) to Langer's (1980) symmetric two-dimensional nonlocal model of solidification with finite anisotropy in the limit of large undercooling. A solution based on the WKB approximation is obtained, and a saddle-point evaluation is performed. It is shown that needle-crystal solutions exist only if the capillary anisotropy is nonzero, in which case a particular value of the growth velocity can be selected. This finding and the expression for the dependence of the selected velocity on the singular perturbation parameter and the strength of the anisotropy are found to be in complete agreement with the results of a boundary-layer model (Langer and Hong, 1986).
Electrical and aerodynamic torques on atmospheric ice particles are calculaed in order to assess the degree of alignment of these particles with the electric fields in thunderstorms. In such clouds fields of many tens of kilovolts per meter are commonly measured, and values of 100 to 200 kV/m are not rare. For E = 100 kV/m the calculations indicate that electric field alignment occurs for crystals with major dimensions up to maximum values in the range from 200 microns to 1 mm, depending upon crystal type. Columns are aligned more easily than platelike crystals, except for dendrites which, by virtue of their smaller assumed density, have smaller fall velocities thereby experiencing weaker aerodynamic torques. Thus a substantial degree of alignment is expected for E = 100 kV/m. For E = 10 kV/m only much smaller crystals will be aligned, probably only ones with major dimensions of less than 50 microns or so.
The sources of methane and its flux to the troposphere from the Amazonian floodplain were investigated during the dry season of July and August 1985, using measurements of methane concentration gradients obtained aboard a houseboat laboratory anchored in Lago Calado, a stratified dendritic lake of about 6-sq km area located near the center of the Amazon Basin. Methane concentrations in the mixed layer of the lake were found to vary from 0.0001 to 0.0055 mM, with no consistent temporal trend. The measured methane flux from the surface of the open lake to the atmosphere averaged 27 mg CH4/sq m per day, consistent with the buildup in ambient methane in the nocturnal surface mixed layer of the troposphere. Ebullition contributed 70 percent to the average total flux. The source of methane to the lake and, ultimately, to the troposphere is the benthic sediments.
An attempt is made to illustrate the continuous change that occurs in the solidification behavior of undercooled melts, as cooling rates increase from 0.0001 K/sec to about 1000 K/sec. At the higher cooling rates, more significant changes occur as the dendrite tip temperature begins to drop from the equilibrium liquidus. Discontinuous solidification behavior changes will occur if absolute stability is reached, or a metastable phase forms, or solidification proceeds to a glass rather than to a crystalline solid, or if there is significant undercooling prior to nucleation.
Chill block melt spun ribbons of Ni-Mo binary alloys containing 8.0 to 41.8 wt pct Mo have been prepared under carefully controlled processing conditions. The growth velocity has been determined as a function of distance from the quench surface from the observed ribbon thickness dependence on the melt puddle residence time. Primary arm spacing measured at the midribbon thickness locations show a dependence on growth velocity and alloy composition which is expected from dendritic growth models for binary alloys directionally solidified in a positive temperature gradient.
Experiments at the NASA Lewis Research Center's Microgravity Material Science Laboratory using physical and mathematical models to delineate the effects of gravity on processes of scientific and commercial interest are discussed. Where possible, transparent model systems are used to visually track convection, settling, crystal growth, phase separation, agglomeration, vapor transport, diffusive flow, and polymer reactions. Materials studied include metals, alloys, salts, glasses, ceramics, and polymers. Specific technologies discussed include the General Purpose furnace used in the study of metals and crystal growth, the isothermal dendrite growth apparatus, the electromagnetic levitator/instrumented drop tube, the high temperature directional solidification furnace, the ceramics and polymer laboratories and the center's computing facilities.
A directionally solidified PbCl2 material was prepared and analyzed and subsequently used to grow single crystals. It was found that silicon, halogens, sulfur, magnesium, and phosphorus were the hardest impurities to remove by the single-pass directional freezing. Single crystals grown from the purified material displayed good scattering beam quality and showed no absorption peaks between 0.30 to 20 microns. Direct photographic observations of the solid-liquid interface at several G/V (denoting the temperature gradient and the translation velocity, respectively) ratio values showed that, as the G/V ratio decreased, the interface varied from a smooth convex surface to dendritic.
The mechanical and electrical properties of crystals produced by a unidirectional process depend strongly on the temperature and flow fields since these control the concentration of solute at the melt-crystal interface. The solute gradient there drives morphological instabilities that lead to cellular or dendritic interfaces. In the presentation several features of flow-solidification interactions will be discussed. These will include the effects of convection driven by density changes and buoyancy and the imposition of forced flow.
The combined effects of nutrient diffusion and surface kinetics on the crystal morphology were investigated using a Monte Carlo model to simulate the evolving morphology of a crystal growing from a two-component gaseous nutrient phase. The model combines nutrient diffusion, based on a modified diffusion-limited aggregation process, with anisotropic surface-attachment kinetics and surface diffusion. A variety of conditions, ranging from kinetic-controlled to diffusion-controlled growth, were examined. Successive transitions from compact faceted (dominant surface kinetics) to open dendritic morphologies (dominant volume diffusion) were obtained.
Data for the densities and expansion coefficients of solid and liquid alloys of the Pb-Sn system are consolidated in this paper. More importantly, the data are analyzed with the purpose of expressing either the density of the solid or of the liquid as a function of its composition and temperature. In particular, the densities of the solid and of the liquid during dendritic solidification are derived. Finally, the solutal and thermal coefficients of volume expansion for the liquid are given as functions of temperature and composition.
New trenched lid intercepts less radiation from edges of growing silicon ribbon, giving rise to faster growth and temperature distribution resulting in lower residual stress. Cutting trench in susceptor lid allows edges of growing ribbon of silicon to cool more rapidly. Edges cool and solidify nearly same rate as center of ribbon, and thermal stress in ribbon reduced. Because of more-effective edge cooling, wider ribbon grown, and withdrawn at faster rate. Productivity of dendritic-web growth furnace increased.