Melt Growth of Indium-Iodide on Earth and in Microgravity Riabov, Vladimir Engineering Crystal Growth Heat Transfer Heavy Metal Halide Materials Science Radiation Detector Solidification Indium Iodide is a heavy metal halide and a wide band-gap semiconductor which has a potential for application in room temperature γ- and X-ray detectors. Its physical properties are similar to those of other materials used as room temperature radiation detectors. Over the years the technology of purification and crystal growth of InI was developed. Significant advances were made to improve purity, crystal structure and resulting electronic properties of the material. Nevertheless, the desired detector performance has not been achieved yet. Stress-induced crystal lattice defects resulting from solidification in contact with crucible are suspected to be responsible for the limited performance. Microgravity environment was previously used to study its effects on the process of crystal growth from the melt applied to semiconductors. It was observed that unlike on Earth materials can solidify without contact with the wall, when the sample is confined by the crucible. It was also shown that such detached solidification can drastically reduce stress-induced defects of the crystal lattice and improve electronic properties of the material. In this study crystal growth of InI was studied in microgravity, attempting to achieve detached solidification, and observe it in a transparent zone of a furnace. Partially detached solidification (a large free surface) has occurred in one of the samples. The resulting crystals were characterized by measuring their electronic properties and estimating the radiation detector performance of the devices manufactured using the crystals. Ostrogorsky, Aleksandar G. 2023 Dissertation application/pdf islandora:1024339 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/islandora:1024339 Illinois Institute of Technology MMAE / Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering en In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access