Single Crystals Technology
Always One Step Ahead of the World in Crystal Technology
That’s Our Raison d’être
Oxide offers a wide range of crystal materials with high optical capabilities demanded by the photonics era. Such high quality crystals can only be manufactured thanks to our strong technology base and experiences. Among our technology portfolio, Double-Crucible Czochralski (DCCZ) Method with Automated Material Supply is a very unique and powerful technology. The method was invented by the National Institute for Material Science (NIMS) of Japan, licensed to and commercially established by Oxide. This novel technology has enabled the high-performance and high-quality crystals which had been only theoretically possible. In addition to DCCZ, we employ many other growth methods, including EFG, TSSG, FZ, VB etc., so as to manufacture various crystal materials requested by customers in the most suitable method.
Oxide can help the quest of customers who wish to realize the optical characteristics that are not satisfied by existing materials. Contract R&D to Oxide is a powerful tool in such search processes, of course. In addition, those clients who look for new ceramic material, we recommend them to consider trial growth of single crystal as a useful alternative.
For quick and efficient material search, it is essential to do several runs of test crystal growth in a short period of time while constantly feeding back the preceding test results into the next run. Combination of crystal growth by FZ method and experiment of melting and solitification with crystal property analysis achieve such purpose.
For years, users had various kinds of frustration about their crystal material: such as
1) Crystal quality is high but available size is too small for practical purpose.
2) Crystal quality is too poor to achieve the desired performance, etc.
The frustration resulted from the difficulty to be encountered in growing some types of crystals. Oxide has now overcome these challenges and can offer our wide variety of crystal materials, which have both quality and size to satisfy user’s needs.
Easiness of cracking or fragility of the material, high growth-furnace temperature, heterogeneity in the material caused by segregation, impurities or foreign matters inside the material are the major factors that make crystal growth very difficult. Oxide has established a robust manufacturing process, which consists of novel material-feeding method, high-accuracy temperature control and advanced molten-melt stirring technique to solve these problems. As a result, Oxide crystals satisfy the customer’s requirements in size and quality.
Some of the optical crystal materials were available only for R&D or experimental purposes and in small quantity because of the difficulty of their growth.
Oxide can now respond to the commercial needs for such materials, as we are able to grow them stably and in large quantity. We are also ready to work with our clients to further decrease crystal growth cost.
Oxide crystal engineer team consists of specialists, each having years of crystal-growth and/or R&D experience in the leading manufacturers such as Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsui etc. Also, Oxide has constantly strengthened its technology and manufacturing base by introducing crystal or optical technology and know-how or purchasing business unit from NEC, Taki Chemical and Hitachi Metal. Oxide is now a gravity center of single crystal engineers and technology and one of a few remaining all-round crystal growing companies.