NSLS-II Friday Lunchtime Seminar

Single crystal materials have unique properties which are endowed by their long ranging atomic order. Growing these crystalline materials can be difficult, as entropy favors disordered grains and the growth dynamics are poorly understood, leaving the process of making crystals prone to trial and error and limiting its application in the broader research community. In my talk I will discuss our work elucidating the microstructural dynamics of floating zone growth using x-ray scattering techniques. One focus of this work is building the computational infrastructure to process the large stream of heterogeneous data which results from these techniques. These pieces of infrastructure are then used to characterize the growth of Rutile crystals via a float zone furnace. Particular attention is paid to the competition amongst the grains, and how certain grains are selected from the plethora which are created at the beginning of the growth.