This new textbook provides for the first time a comprehensive treatment of the basics of contemporary crystallography and crystal growth in a single volume. The reader will be familiarized with the concepts for the description of morphological and structural symmetry of crystals. The architecture of crystal structures of selected inorganic and molecular crystals is illustrated. The main crystallographic databases as data sources of crystal structures are described. Nucleation processes, their kinetics and main growth mechanism will be introduced in fundamentals of crystal growth. Some phase diagrams in the solid and liquid phases in correlation with the segregation of dopants are treated on a macro- and microscale. Fluid dynamic aspects with different types of convection in melts and solutions are discussed. Various growth techniques for semiconducting materials in connection with the use of external field (magnetic fields and microgravity) are described. Crystal characterization as the overall assessment of the grown crystal is treated in detail with respect to crystal defects crystal quality field of application Introduction to Crystal Growth and Characterization is an ideal textbook written in a form readily accessible to undergraduate and graduate students of crystallography, physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering. It is also a valuable resource for all scientists concerned with crystal growth and materials engineering.

Professor Emeritus Klaus-Werner Benz was Head of the Crystallographic Institute of the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Director at the Freiburg Materials Research Center until September 2003. From 1999 on he served as Vice-President of the University of Freiburg for Communication Technologies and Science Transfer. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and has authored more than 300 publications in the field of material science, crystal growth and characterization, semiconductor technology and fluid dynamics. Wolfgang Neumann is Professor of Crystallography at the Institute of Physics of the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He studied mineralogy in Berlin and obtained his Ph.D. and Habilitation degrees in Applied Physics from the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg. Since 1997, he is Editor-in-Chief of Crystal Research and Technology. He became Director of the International Centre of Advanced Materials and Electron Microscopy in 2001 and serves as Chairman of the German Society for Crystallography since 2006. His research interests focus on crystallography, materials science and electron microscopy. He performs structure investigations of nanostructured materials by means of analytical high-resolution electron microscopy. Wolfgang Neumann (Editor-in-Chief) and Klaus W. Benz (Consulting Editor) have collaborated for many years as main scientific editors of the materials science journal "Crystal Research and Technology".

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