the Czochralski process occurs inside a chamber filled only with argon gas. The boule slowly turns and is gradually lifted, until eventually above the crucible there is an extraordinary-looking, long, shiny, dark metallic cylinder hanging by a thread only a few millimetres thick. But only when you use X-ray diffraction to examine this torpedo, this silicon sausage, do you see the most extraordinary thing: the atoms are arranged into a quite perfect crystal.
