Jan Czochralski (pronounced cho-HRAL-skee) (October 23, 1885 - April 22, 1953) was a Polish chemist who invented the Czochralski process, which is used to grow single crystals and is used in the production of semiconductor wafers. Czochralski was born in Kcynia, Poland. Around 1900 he moved to Berlin, where he worked at a pharmacy. He was educated at Charlottenburg Polytechnic in Berlin, where he specialized in metal chemistry. Czochralski began working as an engineer for Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft (AEG) in 1907.
He discovered the Czochralski method in 1916, when he accidentally dipped his pen[citation needed] into a crucible of molten tin rather than his inkwell. He immediately pulled his pen out to discover that a thin thread of solidified metal was hanging from the nib. The nib was replaced by a capillary, and Czochralski verified that the crystallized metal was a single crystal. The experiments of Czochralski produced single crystals that were a millimeter in diameter and up to 150 centimeters long. Czochralski published a paper on his discovery in 1918 in the Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie, a German chemistry journal, under the title "Ein neues Verfahren zur Messung der Kristallisationsgeschwindigkeit der Metalle" [A new method for the measurement of the crystallization rate of metals], since the method was at that time used for measuring the crystallization rate of metals such as tin, zinc and lead. In 1950, Americans Gordon K. Teal and J.B. Little from Bell Labs used this method to grow single germanium crystals, which began its use in producing suitable semiconductors.
This pen dip could happen with silicon or the paper could be applied to silicon sooner.