Welcome to the debut of my very own blog, the Float Zone. Float zone wafers first came about in the 1960’s as a manufacturing method for fabricating very pure silicon. In the process, a polysilicon rod with a seed crystal at the bottom is held in vertical position. A small zone is kept molten by and is moved upward so the floating zone traverses the length of the rod. Impurities coalesce in the molten region rather than the solidified region, allowing very pure silicon crystal fabrication after the molten region has passed. But this growth technique has been surpassed by the cheaper alternative, Czochraski growing, for most applications. However, float zone wafers have a key niche due to their high resistivity, very low defectivity and low oxygen content, making them ideally suited for power devices, some high efficiency solar cells and RF/wireles...Read More

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