4. IKZ Summer Course on Crystal Growth 2009


In the month of June of the current reporting period the "IKZ Summer Course on Crystal Growth" took place, now already for the fourth time. During the week from June 8 until June 12 Professor Aleksandar Ostrogorsky from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, delivered five lectures under the general headline "Heat and Mass Transfer in Crystal Growth". With Aleksandar Ostrogorsky another worldwide well-renowned expert followed J. Derby, A. Chernov and T. Nishinaga as a lecturer for the IKZ Summer Course on Crystal Growth. Ostrogorsky received his Dipl. Ing. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Belgrade in former Yugoslavia. In 1981 he received the Masters degree in Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY, and finally the Sc. D. in Mechanical Engineering at MIT in Cambridge. At this time and later on until 1987 he worked in the group of August Witt, one of the outstanding crystal growers of that time. An Assistant Professor position at the Columbia University of the City of New York and a one-year's Humboldt Fellowship (1991) with Prof. Georg Müller at the University of Erlangen were further stations in his scientific career. He came back to the Rensselaer faculty in 1993. For two years he was director of the Center for Microgravity and Materials Research at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In September of this year he will join the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Ostrogorsky is a Fellow or Member of numerous scientific societies and organizations and received a number of awards for scientific and technical achievements. He is known as an outstanding member of the international community of crystal growers. Following his education and scientific biography Ostrogorsky was active in numerous fields, especially in fluid dynamics and heat transfer. He was concerned with rather different materials, from opaque semiconductors with low melting temperature to transparent oxide crystals with high melting temperature, where heat transfer is governed by quite different mechanisms. This universalism, tightly connected with own research, made him especially well predestined as a lecturer for the IKZ Summer Course. While last year's Course essentially dealt with processes on a microscopic scale at and on the crystal surface, this year's Course was devoted to macroscopic phenomena of heat and mass transfer and their mathematical description, such as viscous flows and heat transfer by radiation. The demanding treatment included mass and heat transfer by diffusion and convection, segregation, boundary layer theory, natural and forced convection, laminar and turbulent flows. The experienced crystal grower became familiar with the derivation, physical background and limitations of frequently used equations, such as for the boundary layer thickness, e.g.. The younger one received an overview over analogies and differences between heat and mass transfer. The presentation was rather comprehensive and even mathematical problems have been considered from time to time in rather depth. Maybe that someone became overwhelmed by the total body of the subject. But it is just this wealth of phenomena and mathematical difficulty in an exact treatment that makes it so difficult to come to a deeper knowledge and understanding of the phenomena associated with heat and mass transfer by reading alone. This year's summer Course provided a helpful guidance for finding one's own way through the jungle. And last, but not least it should be mentioned that also this year an important aspect for the attendees was the possibility to experience the personality of the lecturer. The participants experienced Aleksandar Ostrogorsky as a competent, friendly scientist who is critically trying to get to the bottom of the problems.