Developments in Interferometric Techniques for In‐situ Observation of Surface Kinetics of Crystals in Solutions and Three‐dimensional Analysis of Transport Phenomena

Importance of optical imaging techniques for mapping surface features of crystals growing from their aqueous solution at a nanoscopic level and the associated transport phenomena has been realized over the past few decades. The spatial resolution in the measurements of growth rates and detection of surface irregularities as provided by scanning probe microscopic (SPM) techniques such as AFM and STM has been found to be better than the conventional interferometric techniques. However, with recent developments in the field of light sources and optical components, new advanced interferometers have attained nearly the same resolution as scanning microscopes. The advantages of using optical interferometers can be summarized as follows: (1) they can be used not only at room temperature but also at elevated temperatures as high as ∼2000 K; (2) their ability to resolve time is much better, making them more suitable for observing rapidly growing crystals; (3) coupled with the principles of tomography, they are cap...