Verneuil method

Artificial single crystal of rutile (a base material with high potential) . Rutile is one of the polymorphs of Titanium dioxide (TiO₂). This piece is 25mm in diameter and 4mm thick. It was grown by the current-day-available technology called "verneuil method". A thermodynamic mean of production.

The verneuil method is a method to grow large macroscopic chunks of single crystals.
It clearly falls under today's thermodynamic means of production with all it's associated limitations.

This and similar methods (zone melting) where and are extremely useful and essential for today's technology.

Characteristics:

• there are no grain boundaries – the products are truly a macroscopic single crystal
• there are still quite a lot of flaws (like step- and screw-dislocations) integrated right from the start with out even radiation worsening order
• there is no defined termination point of selfassembly

Related

• Thermodynamic means for macroscopic single crystal production
• Smaller: Thermodynamic nanocrystals and nanoparticles

Single crystals (not necessarily macroscopic) with atomically precise perfectly flat surfaces have been considered as "building platform substrates" in the context of the direct path to advanced productive nanosystems.
More practical may be the integration of advanced de-novo foldamer technology into/onto chip technology only after considerable bottom up development along the incremental path.

External links

Wikipedia:

• Verneuil method

Related:

• Zone melting
• Chemical vapor deposition