3.1 Crystals and Growth

The basic semiconductor materials used in chips are crystalline silicon. This section briefly discuss about the properties of semiconductor crystals and how silicon crystals are grown.

3.1.1 Crystals

Solid materials are classified by the way the atoms are arranged within the solid. Materials in which atoms are placed at random are called amorphous. Materials in which atoms are placed in a high ordered structure are called crystalline. Poly-crystalline materials are materials with a high degree of short-range order and no long-range order. These materials consist of small crystalline regions with random orientation called grains, separated by grain boundaries. There three arrangements are summarized in Fig.3.1.