Solid–liquid interface energy of silicon Original Research Article

By examining the morphologies of the recalescence interface and the growing crystal, direct evidence for silicon to grow in intermediary mode has been found, and the critical undercooling for silicon from lateral growth to intermediary growth ΔT∗ and that from intermediary growth to continuous growth ΔT∗∗ have been determined. A method that predicts the solid–liquid interface energy on the basis of the critical growth transition undercooling has been developed. The solid–liquid interface energy predicted from ΔT∗ for silicon is in very good agreement with that from ΔT∗∗. The percentage error between the solid and liquid interface energies predicted from ΔT∗ and Δ T∗∗ is smaller than 0.59% when the temperature is in the range 783–1683 K. The results obtained for the solid–liquid interface energy predicted from the critical growth transition undercoolings for silicon are also consistent with the reported results from the nucleation method and the grain boundary method. Their percentage errors are in the range 0.24–4.55%.