The growth of compositionally uniform InAs1-xSbx bulk crystals remains a formidable challenge due to severe solute segregation and morphological instability under terrestrial conditions. Here, we report the successful growth of a single-crystalline InAs0.933Sb0.067 alloy (x = 6.7 mol%) on an InAs seed via the vertical gradient freeze method aboard the China Space Station. Crucially, microgravity enables diffusion-dominated solidification by suppressing buoyancy-driven convection. As a direct consequence, the crystal is free of macroscopic voids and striations, exhibits a tenfold reduction in dislocation density, and maintains Sb compositional uniformity (±0.5 mol%) over its entire ~11 mm diameter and ~2.5 mm growth length. Moreover, the microgravity-grown crystal outperforms its terrestrial counterpart in both crystalline quality and electrical properties. These findings highlight that microgravity provides a unique pathway to overcome the intrinsic limitations of ground-based growth, enabling crystal quality unattainable on Earth — with potential relevance to advanced optoelectronic applications.
Building similarity graph...
Analyzing shared references across papers
Loading...
Jidong Huang
Huaiwen Zheng
Yin Zhigang
npj Microgravity
Chinese Academy of Sciences
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shanghai Institute of Ceramics
Building similarity graph...
Analyzing shared references across papers
Loading...
Huang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
synapsesocial.com/papers/69a286240a974eb0d3c00e1d — DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41526-026-00581-5
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: