OREANDA-NEWS. August 28, 2015. Monocrystal, RUSNANO’s portfolio company, is a global leader in growing and processing synthetic sapphire. The company demonstrated the world’s first synthetic sapphire crystal of 300 kilograms, which was grown using modified Kyropoulos method and its own technology.

The Kyropoulos method is traditionally used for growing high quality synthetic sapphires, as it is more suitable than others for large-scale production. The essence of the method is a smooth temperature reduction leading to aluminium oxide (Al2O3) melt crystallization around the seed crystal in vacuum. The cooled seed crystal becomes a basis for the future sapphire crystal and is pulled out of the melt as the crystal grows.

By modifying the Kyropoulos procedure with its own technology, Monocrystal succeeded in increasing the maximum weight of grown sapphires to 300 kg.

Due to the highest quality of produced sapphires and leadership in costs Monocrystal is the main supplier of leading global manufacturers of light emitting diodes, optical components and RF integrated circuits.

“We help our customers to open new opportunities for using large-sized sapphire components in light emitting diodes and consumer electronics production. Besides, super-large crystals will allow us to reduce costs significantly in the future and give access to new price-sensitive markets. 300 kilogram crystals bring our production scalability to a revolutionary level, which is key to a wider use of sapphires in smart phones and other mobile devices which traditionally use reinforced glass,” commented Oleg Kachalov, CEO of Monocrystal.

Monocrystal has 30-year experience in sapphire production, and the introduction of the technology for growing 300 kilogram sapphires has become an important landmark in improving production competencies.

In 2011, RUSNANO joined the project of Monocrystal to extend industrial-scale production of synthetic monocrystalline sapphires, sapphire substrates for light emitting diodes and high-frequency integrated circuits, as well as silver-containing and aluminium composite metallization pastes for silicon solar elements.

Summary of Technology

Monocrystalline synthetic sapphire is the second hardest material after diamond. It is an artificially grown crystal used in microelectronics, optoelectronics, optics, machine building and instrument making, medicine, production of non-scratch glass of different forms, as well as in production of blue semiconductor lasers for systems requiring high data recording density, for example, game consoles, Blue-ray players and other HD-DVD devices. Sapphire is the main material in light emitting diode production, as its lattice allows building up a gallium nitride (GaN) epi layer with good performance characteristics and good value for money.