| mjohnson |
11-21-2025 06:34 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by masraum
(Post 12565726)
I'll take "statements that you'd never expect to hear" for $500, please, Alex.
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(generalizing of course)
In the materials world, you have two sects. The thermodynamics-focused seekers of truth (me) and the kinetics-tainted swill.
Maybe it is that thermodynamics, the drive of nature, directs all? Maybe it's that one or more of us had a really hard time with chemical reaction kinetics?
Let's keep welding out of it. That's a mystical mash of the worst bits of thermo with kinetics. And some voodoo.
But seriously, this versatium video was more or less 100.0% in line with my allegedly proper and rigorous metallurgy education. They captured some concepts that are so fundamental but that are complicated/hard.
The pigtail mold is cool, but the next step up is the float-zone refining that I used to help out with at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. We would finish with a seeded single crystal of silicon - purer than any other as it didn't have any container/crucible to muck up the product. Like ppb or better purity. The coolest part was that a few inches above the seed you'd see the last dislocation exit, distorting the solidified surface. Past that was not only very very pure Si, it was also dislocation free - having only the remaining defects required by thermodynamics/physics. This silicon was valuable for solar cell research and very high power density semiconductor devices because defects (dislocations/impurities/etc) knocked down the hole-pair lifetimes sucking up energy and making heat.
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