ABSTRACT
Since a phase transition of rst order involves latent heat, we must consider it as an important thermodynamic quantity that has relevance to crystal growth. In particular, when a crystal is being grown from the melt at a relatively high growth rate, the released latent heat of fusion would be signi- cant and hence bound to inuence its growth. It is to be noted that latent
heats vary widely, covering two orders of magnitude. In general, one should keep in mind the following relationships between various kinds of latent heat while attempting to grow crystals from the three phases, that is, solid, liquid, and vapor.
