Sapphire Materials:
Sapphire is grown using various different methods, each with its advantages. By offering Sapphire grown by Stepanov, Czochralski, Kryopolus and HDSM methods, Roditi ensure that the specification is met with the best production time and cost in mind.
Boules, Ingots and Blanks
Unprocessed, single crystal Sapphire takes the form of a boule before being cut and polished into the required forms.
The boule is a large, cylindrical-like piece of Sapphire with no ground, polished or flat faces and offers any crystallographic orientation of components, such as c, m, r and a-cut. Because of Sapphire's tremendous hardness, the cutting and processing is done with diamond tools.
Boules such as this are processed into blanks and ingots ready for further processing and polishing. Such blanks and ingots are uniformly shaped, usually as cylinders, and have ground surfaces.