This new textbook provides for the first time a comprehensive treatment of the basics of contemporary crystallography and crystal growth in a single volume. The reader will be familiarized with the concepts for the description of morphological and structural symmetry of crystals. The architecture of crystal structures of selected inorganic and molecular crystals is illustrated. The main crystallographic databases as data sources of crystal structures are described.
Nucleation processes, their kinetics and main growth mechanism will be introduced in fundamentals of crystal growth. Some phase diagrams in the solid and liquid phases in correlation with the segregation of dopants are treated on a macro- and microscale. Fluid dynamic aspects with different types of convection in melts and solutions are discussed. Various growth techniques for semiconducting materials in connection with the use of external field (magnetic fields and microgravity) are described.
Crystal characterization as the overall assessment of the grown crystal is treated in detail with respect to
- crystal defects
- crystal quality
- field of application
Introduction to Crystal Growth and Characterization is an ideal textbook written in a form readily accessible to undergraduate and graduate students of crystallography, physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering. It is also a valuable resource for all scientists concerned with crystal growth and materials engineering.


Klaus-Werner Benz, Emeritus, was Head of the Crystallographic Institute of the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Founding-Director at the Freiburg Materials Research Center, FMF until September 2003. Prof. Benz was a member of the scientific project management of the German Spacelab Missions D1 and D2 and the European Space Mission EURECA1. From 1999 on he served as Vice-President for Communication Technologies and Science Transfer of the University of Freiburg. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and has authored more than 300 publications in the field of material science, crystal growth and characterization, semiconductor physics and semiconductor technology and fluid dynamics in melts and metallic solutions of semiconducting materials.
Wolfgang Neumann was full professor of Crystallography at the Institute of Physics at Humboldt University Berlin from 1996 to 2010. Before that, he was a staff scientist at the Institute of Solid State Physics and Electron Microscopy of the Academy of Sciences in Halle (Saale) and since 1992 at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics at the same place. From 1985 onwards, he was a member of the Scientific Council of the 'International Centre for Electron Microscopy' in Halle and mainly involved in the organization of international schools on electron microscopy and materials science. Prof. Neumann was the Director of this international Centre in Berlin from 2001 until his retirement from Humboldt University Berlin in 2010. His fields of scientific interests include: Structure investigations of nanostructured materials by means of analytical high-resolution electron microscopy, the study of defect formation during crystal growth and device processing as well as the analysis of order-disorder phenomena in crystals.
Wolfgang Neumann (Editor-in-Chief) and Klaus W. Benz (Consulting Editor) have collaborated for many years as main scientific editors of the materials science journal 'Crystal Research and Technology'.