Abstract Second half of the XX century was marked by a rapid development of sapphire shaped crystal growth technologies, driven by the demands for fast, low-cost, and technologically reliable methods of producing sapphire crystals of complex shape. Numerous techniques of shaped crystal growth from a melt have been proposed relying on the Stepanov concept of crystal shaping. In this review, we briefly describe the development of growth techniques, with a strong emphasize on those that yield sapphire crystals featuring high volumetric and surface quality. A favorable combination of physical properties of sapphire (superior hardness and tensile strength, impressive thermal conductivity and chemical inertness, high melting point and thermal shock resistance, transparency to electromagnetic waves in a wide spectral range) with advantages of shaped crystal growth techniques (primarily, an ability to produce sapphire crystals with a complex geometry of cross-section, along with high volumetric and surface quality) allows fabricating various instruments for waveguiding, sensing, and exposure technologies. We discuss recent developments of high-tech instruments, which are based on sapphire shaped crystals and vigorously employed in biomedical and material sciences, optics and photonics, nuclear physics and plasma sciences.

中文翻译：

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用于波导、传感和曝光应用的蓝宝石晶体

摘要 20 世纪下半叶，由于需要快速、低成本和技术可靠的复杂形状蓝宝石晶体生产方法，蓝宝石形状的晶体生长技术得到了快速发展。依赖于晶体成形的 Stepanov 概念，已经提出了许多从熔体生长成形晶体的技术。在这篇评论中，我们简要描述了生长技术的发展，并着重强调了那些产生具有高体积和表面质量的蓝宝石晶体的技术。蓝宝石物理特性的良好组合（卓越的硬度和抗拉强度、令人印象深刻的导热性和化学惰性、高熔点和抗热震性，对宽光谱范围内的电磁波透明）具有成形晶体生长技术的优势（主要是能够生产具有复杂横截面几何形状的蓝宝石晶体，以及高体积和表面质量）允许制造各种用于波导的仪器，传感和曝光技术。我们讨论了基于蓝宝石晶体的高科技仪器的最新发展，这些仪器在生物医学和材料科学、光学和光子学、核物理和等离子体科学中得到了广泛应用。