The words in () are my attempt at kewording the book. Comments invited or suggestions for improved keywords.
Title: Crystal Growth Technology
Editors:
K. Byrappa and T. Ohachi
Publisher: William Andrew Publishing, New York and Springer Verlag, Berlin 2002
Price: US$ 155 (hardback) or £105,
ISBN 0815514530; xxi + 590 pages.
Crystal Growth Technology is a commendable addition to the extensive literature of crystal growth because it aims to cover techniques and processes in current use for the production of industrially important crystals. Single crystals are the foundations of modern industry but, despite their enormous economic importance, details of production processes are sparsely represented in conferences or in the literature. (It should be noted that the first international school on crystal growth technology as a specific topic was not held until 1998). The editors of the book, K.Byrappa and T. Ohachi, are distinguished workers in the world of crystal growth, Byrappa in hydrothermal growth and Ohachi in molecular beam epitaxy. The book has seventeen chapters, only two of which (Chapters 2 & 8) are exclusively theoretical, each being a review of some topic related to the production of industrially and biologically important crystals.
Reviewing a book compiled from contributions by a number of authors requires two interlinked approaches, one of which, in common with any other review, is an assessment of the success of the book in meeting the specification implied by its title, the other being the discussion of the merits of individual contributions. In case of the present book, individual chapters can hardly be faulted. Indeed, it is unusual for all the contributions in such a compilation to be of such a uniformly high standard and the editors are to be congratulated. An analysis of every chapter would make this review intolerably long but a few have been selected for more detailed discussion.
Ichiro Sunagawa's subject (Chap.1), morphological features of mineral crystals, may seem a surprising choice for inclusion in this book but the author's extensive knowledge and deep understanding of crystal growth have resulted in a stimulating essay on the significance of morphological features, which, despite the examples being restricted to beryl, diamond and ruby, is of much more general significance, and should be important even to workers studying the growth of crystals in a biological environment.
Irisawa's contribution (Chap.2) on the theory of crystal growth from vapour and solution is a competent treatment of basic theory starting from the concept of thermodynamic driving force and the surface models of Kossel and Stranski. The treatment is extended to growth from solution and incorporates the necessary modifications of the theory to cope with solvation effects. The chapter is well presented but is essentially introductory and covers only long-established theory. I feel that most potential readers of this book will be already familiar with theory at this level or, at least, have access to more comprehensive and recent work.
Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) has evolved from being a powerful research tool into a technique for the production of specialised nanostructures in III-V compounds and the parallel development of vapour-phase epitaxy using organometallic compounds (MOVPE) has resulted in important new optical and electronic devices. The chapter by T. Nishinaga and S. Naritsuka (Chap.3) provides a compact review of both these processes and emphasises the fact that the purity level achieved by MOCVD is not inferior to that obtained by MBE. The chapter is divided approximately into three, the first two parts covering MBE and MOCVD and comparing their chemistry and elementary growth processes. The final part describes the production of nanostructures such as quantum well wires (QWW) and quantum dots. This part also covers highly mismatched heterogeneous interfaces and the production of GaN lasers by microchannel epitaxy.
The chapters on diamond synthesis (4), silicon carbide (6 & 7) and quartz (11) strike an excellent balance between basic science and practical details. All these chapters have extensive lists of valuable references.
Chapter 16 is an admirably detailed review of the growth of hydroxyapatite crystals related to biomaterials. Calcium orthophosphates, particularly hydroxyapatite, occupy an important place in many biological and medical topics: they are associated with pathological calcifications such as dental plaque, urinary calculi and artherosclerosis; they form the foundations of bone and tooth structures and they find use as orthopaedic and dental cements. The authors, Atsuo Ito and Kazuo Onuma, introduce the calcium orthophosphate family and discuss the prevention of undesirable calcification at the surface of implanted biomaterials, the composition and properties of phoshate cements and the various factors influencing the formation of hydroxyapatite in hard tissue. These diverse processes are shown to depend entirely upon the crystal growth kinetics of hydroxyapatite. This chapter provides an extremely informative review and, with its 196 references, is an approachable and comprehensive introduction to this important and growing field.
The last chapter (17) is devoted to the growth of gemstones and is a good general review of the subject but does not present much new information and would have been more appropriate in a gemmological publication. In view of the two outstanding chapters on silicon carbide already referred to, it seems strange that this chapter makes no mention of recent work on the important SiC gemstone, moissanite. (See, for example, K. Nassau, J. Gemmology, vol. 26 [7)] 1999).
The chapters not individually discussed cover the following topics: laser-assisted growth of PZT films, multicomponent perovskites, borate crystals for non-linear optics, hydrothermal growth of rare-earth vanadates, lithium niobate & bismuth germanate, high-temperature superconductors and zinc chalcogenides.
Considered as a whole, the book is successful in presenting compact and well-written pieces on selected topics. However, it does suffer from the omission of some extremely important subjects, for example, silicon, scintillators, habit control in bulk crystallization, corundum, large-scale growth from aqueous solution, and organic compounds. While no book can be fully comprehensive, I feel that, if some of these gaps had been filled, it would have been a more satisfactory piece of work. The aims of the book would have been achieved to a greater extent also if the amount of background science had been reduced and more emphasis given to contemporary production methods. Some of the chapters, although of good quality, might have appeared in any conventional book on crystal growth with no claim to a particular emphasis on technology or production.
This book would certainly be a desirable addition to a library but, with the price set at £105, it cannot be seriously recommended to individual purchasers.
As a result of reading this book - although this is not intended as a criticism - I have been reflecting on the current use of the word technology and would like to make a plea for some restraint. The word technology meant originally the study of science applied to industry but in the last 20 years or so it has been battered almost out of recognition. Politicians, journalists and other scientific illiterates tend to use the word when they refer to anything involving computers, while the scientific community use it indiscriminately as a fashionable blanket term so that they can avoid making the small effort needed to decide whether they mean method, technique, process, equipment or procedure. Perhaps we should all hesitate the next time we are tempted to say or write anything about technology.
Peter Dryburgh
University of Edinburgh
Title: Intimate Triangle: Archtecture of Crystals,
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Froebel Kindergarten
Author:
Jeanne Spielman Rubin
Publisher: Polycrystal Book Service 2002
Price: US$ $44.95 (hardback)
ISBN 0971877602; xvii + 329 pages.
I've sometimes wondered whether infiltrating children's playgroups with building blocks of all seven crystal systems would build a nation of crystallographers. It would certainly seem from reading this book, that early Froebel training in spatial awareness strongly influenced Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) and many other notable architects, artists and thinkers: including Le Corbusier, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Maurits Escher and even Albert Einstein.
Interestingly, the author is an emeritus professor of music, who lives in a house specially designed for her by Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW). FLW's mother apparently discovered Friedrich Froebel's system of education when she visited the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. His father (William Russell Cary Wright) was superintendent of schools in Richmond County, Wisconsin as well as an accomplished musician, who felt that music was the closest art to architecture, in form, structure and ornamentation. FLW's early years were spent listening to his father playing Beethoven on the piano and playing with Froebel 'gifts' provided by his mother.
Friedrich Froebel's life of educating (1782-1852) overlaps with that of Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and comes a century before Maria Montessori (1870-1952). His system gave the elementary geometrical basis for design and awakened the child mind to 'rhythmic structure' in Nature by the use of constructive playthings (the 'gifts') presented in a specified order. It seems very likely that Froebel's interest in geometrical ideas was reinforced when he became Assistant at the Mineralogical Museum of Berlin, working under the guidance of Christian Samuel Weiss (1780-1856) - the Weiss of the zone law. He was later (1816) offered the professorship of mineralogy at Stockholm University, an invitation which he appears not to have taken up; but his nephew, Julius Froebel, did become Professor of Mineralogy at Zürich.
The Froebel education scheme consisted of the 'gifts' - cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones and many other things - together with the 'system'. The latter embraced the Froebel laws of unity, contrasts, development and connections. Nature observes natural laws when creating, so humankind should also follow them in creative endeavours.
The longest chapter (of over a hundred pages) gives details of all the 'gifts' and the possible connections with FLW's architecture and with geometric crystallography. Several examples are given of four-fold rotational symmetry exhibited by FLW ground plans. There are clear similarities between the nets/meshes drawn on the Froebel table and two-dimensional crystallography. The solid shapes of the cone, cube and sphere were considered by Cézanne to be basic to all others. To these basic shapes, Le Corbusier added the cylinder and FLW the tetrahedron. There are parallels between illustrations in Owen Jones's famous architectural textbook The Grammar of Ornament (1856) and the symmetry groups of crystallography. Arrangements of Froebel's bi-coloured tablets find complete expression in the dichromatic space groups of Shubnikov and Koptsik (1972).
Although R Buckminster Fuller attended kindergarten, it is not entirely clear whether he was Froebel trained. He was once introduced by FLW as 'a scientist interested in architecture', whereas FLW described himself as 'an architect interested in science'. Fuller apparently was visually handicapped to the point of being legally blind from birth: before being fitted with spectacles he had gained his three-dimensional insight through tactile awareness. Certainly he had a great gift for designing structures from tetrahedra and octahedra, and huge polyhedral domes.
I cannot say that this is essential reading for every crystallographer, but if anyone wishes to pursue the connection between early kindergarten training and eventual profession, this book provides many of the clues. It is a scholarly work, with over 150 references, 360 notes and a good index; and it contains many interesting historical anecdotes tracing the influence which members of the various connected families in the USA, Germany, Italy and Switzerland had upon educational reform.
Moreton Moore
Title: International Tables for Crystallography,
Volume E: Subperiodic Groups
Editors:
V. Kopsky and D.B. Litvin
Publisher: IUCr/Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002
Price: £150.00(full rate), £75.00(reduced rate) (hardback)
ISBN 1402007140 ix + 562 pages.
Volume E is the fifth of the "New" International Tables to appear. It covers subperiodic groups, that is, those which are periodic in one or two dimensions and finite in the others. It is composed much in the style of Volume A, with large, clear diagrams, and most of the same tables, including general and special positions, projections and sub- and supergroups. While it will certainly not command the market that Volume A does, it is almost certainly of greater relevance that it may seem to the average crystallographer, as so many structures may be considered as built up from substructures having the symmetries described here.
After an introductory chapter, the first symmetry groups covered are the 2 oblique and the 5 rectangular frieze groups (2-dimensional overall, periodic in one dimension). As these relate to the 17 plane groups, they provide a good introduction to the much more complex rod and layer symmetries which relate to three dimensional objects.
The next section gives the 75 rod groups (3-dimensional overall, periodic in one direction.) Unlike friezes, rods may have an axis of any dimension along the rod, and the authors necessarily include only those which can arise from crystallographic symmetry. Diagrams for the higher symmetry rods show the projection along the rod axis only, while the 22 groups deriving from orthorhombic or lower symmetry show the three projections. Oddly, the projection along the rod is invariably shown as a circle, although an ellipse would seem more suitable, as such rods do not require circular cross-sections.
The third set of groups, the 80 layer groups, are 3-dimensional overall and periodic in two of these. In these diagrams, only the projection along the non-periodic direction is given.
The final section of the book gives scanning tables, where scanning is defined as description of the spatial distribution of local symmetries. In this case, those of interest are the penetration rod groups and the sectional layer groups. Well laid-out scanning tables are given for each of the 230 space groups, and the various sectional layer groups are given explicitly. However, the "distribution of the penetration rod groups is seen directly from the scanning groups" and this is less convenient, as the order and naming of some elements has to be changed.
Examples are given of the uses of the groups, particularly for well known layer structures such as cadmium chloride, and for twin junctions. The contents of the book must, however, also be recommended to molecular and macromolecular crystallographers who encounter the same penetrating rods and sectional layers.
Bob Gould
Page last updated 5 Oct 2003
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