The melt growth by the Czochraslki method was the major technology I have employed during my reserach career to fabricate a large variety of oxides, fluorides and semiconductors. Some of them could have been brought to production stage successfully like LiTaO₃ for SAW devices, GaAs for high-frequency devices or CaF₂ for UV lithography. More recently, Pr:LuAG as scintillator crystal and langasite-type crystals are being prototyped for industrial production. For future developments, I will give an outlook on present and future trends in crystal growth technology of tailor-made, long crystals of Pr:LuAG, sapphire, Nd:YAG, etc. by m-PD [1,2] and mass production of large-sized, wide band gap crystals ZnO [3] and GaN [4] by solvothermal growth techniques.

1. T. Fukuda, P. Rudolph, S. Uda (eds.): Fiber Crystal Growth from the Melt, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2004.

2. T. Fukuda, V.I. Chani (eds.): Micro-Pulling-Down Technique and Growth of Shaped Crystals, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York, to appear in 2007.

3. D. Ehrentraut, Hideto Sato, Y. Kagamitani, Hiroki Sato, A. Yoshikawa, T. Fukuda, Solvothermal Growth of ZnO, Prog. Cryst. Growth Ch. 52 (2006) 280-335.

4. T. Fukuda and D. Ehrentraut, Prospects for the Ammonothermal Growth of Large GaN Crystal, J. Cryst. Growth, accepted.