The Bridgman technique requires a two-zone furnace.

The materials which melt congruently do not decompose before melting and those do not undergo phase transformation between the melting point and room temperature can be grown as single crystal by Bridgman technique.

The material to be grown is encapsulated in glass or quartz tube and suspended in the furnace having suitable gradient for growth.

The tip of the ampoule is mainly conical shaped to enhance nucleation of a single crystal.

The left hand zone is maintained at a temperature of ca. 610 °C, allowing sufficient overpressure of arsenic within the sealed system to prevent arsenic loss from the gallium arsenide.

The right hand side of the furnace contains the polycrystalline GaAs raw material held at a temperature just above its melting point (ca. 1240 °C).

After melting of the substance, growth ampoule is moved from hot zone to cold zone gradually. As the furnace moves from left to right, the melt cools and solidifies.

If a seed crystal is placed at the left hand side of the melt (at a point where the temperature gradient is such that only the end melts), a specific orientation of single crystal may be propagated at the liquid-solid interface eventually to produce a single crystal.

The organic materials which have spherical molecules in cubic lattice can be quite rapidly grown. The average growth rate to start with for most materials is 1 mm/h.

The temperature gradient of solid-liquid interface in the Bridgman furnace is usually lower than that in Czochralski growth; therefore the cracking can be easily avoided during Bridgman growth.

Bridgman technique has been found to be an attractive technique for the growth of large size good quality transparent single crystals in organic and inorganic materials.

A schematic diagram of a Bridgman two-zone furnace used for melt growths of single crystal GaAs.