Materials · 1916

Czochralski crystal pulling

Pulling a seed from a melt grows a single perfect crystal.

Jan Czochralski discovered the method in 1916 in Berlin. Applied to silicon from 1950, it grows nearly all the single-crystal ingots behind today's chips.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Electric power grid 1882

What it led to 2

Zone refining 1950
Silicon solar cell 1954

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

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