Czochralski growth of large metallic alloy single crystals of Al 13 Co 4 and Al 13 Fe 4 from Al-rich solutions has been demonstrated for the first time. A detailed description of all decisive steps of the growth procedure is given with particular emphasis to seeding from a native phase as well as spontaneous nucleation if no seed crystal from a preceding experiment is available. Czochralski growth in a high-temperature solution system requires much lower pulling rates compared to typical growth experiments from the melt and a timedependent temperature program to compensate the change of the liquidus temperature that results from the permanently increasing Al content of the liquid phase. With a given amount of the initial melt, the size of the Al 13 Co 4 crystals is limited by the rather narrow temperature range of the Al 13 Co 4 primary crystallization window, followed by Al 9 Co 2 phase crystallization. In the Al-Fe system, despite the huge temperature range of equilibrium between Al 13 Fe 4 and its Al-rich melt, Czochralski growth of Al 13 Fe 4 is restricted to higher temperatures due to the limited solubility that leads to mother liquid inclusions even at extremely low pulling rates.
Dedicated to Prof. Ladislav BohatΓ½ on the occasion of his 60 th birthday