{"id":13138,"date":"2026-04-21T11:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T11:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/2026\/04\/21\/krystalix-revolutionises-single-crystal-manufacturing\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T08:38:04","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T08:38:04","slug":"krystalix-revolutionises-single-crystal-manufacturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/2026\/04\/21\/krystalix-revolutionises-single-crystal-manufacturing\/","title":{"rendered":"Krystalix revolutionises single-crystal manufacturing"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Krystalix revolutionises single-crystal manufacturing<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Grenoble-based start-up is one of only two companies in the world, and the only one in Europe, to have mastered cold crucible technology for growing single crystals. It will be used for watchmaking, security and semiconductors.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Krystalix, a spin-off from Grenoble INP, was founded in May 2024 by a multidisciplinary team of engineers, doctors, researchers and professors. It has reached the proof-of-concept stage, and a process has been validated on ultra-pure silicon two inches in diameter.\u00a0<\/strong>The commercial launch is planned for 2028 and the location for a future factory has already been chosen.<\/p>\n

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Currently, single-crystal ingots (sapphire, ruby, silicon, YAG, etc.) are \u2018manufactured\u2019 using a hot crucible in which the material is heated to a very high temperature until it reaches melting point. A single seed crystal is then added, which will be captured by the liquid. This heating process has several disadvantages. It uses a lot of energy, and the crucible is expensive because it is made of iridium and also has a short service life. Finally, there is a risk that the crucible will release impurities and thus contaminate the future single crystal.<\/p>\n

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The co-founders of Krystalix, CEO Kader Zaidat and Technical Director Christian Garnier, together with their team, developed the groundbreaking, magnetic cold crucible technology for producing single crystals. This process is much more complex than for metallic polycrystals (titanium, niobium, etc.), for which conventional cold crucibles are already used.<\/p>\n

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\u00ab\u00a0In the cold crucible, the liquid can be heated to 3,000\u00a0\u00b0C and, thanks to the magnetic system, movements in the liquid are controlled and the liquid doesn\u2019t come into contact with the crucible walls, which don\u2019t exceed 50\u00a0\u00b0C,\u00a0\u00bb explains Rachid Chetouane, Managing Director of Krystalix.\u00a0<\/em>\u00ab\u00a0The cold crucible is made of cooled copper and has an almost unlimited service life.\u00a0What\u2019s more, the process uses less energy and the crystal has a very high level of purity.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

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A huge potential market<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Krystalix currently uses its own hot crucibles to produce single crystals for luxury watch manufacturers, for process control purposes and also to generate turnover. Despite its status as a young, innovative deep-tech company, an i-Lab 2023 award followed by prizes for best start-up in the Innotroph\u00e9es and Artinov competitions, which earned it funding from Bpifrance and two private banks, the business has only borrowed small sums. \u00ab\u00a0We\u2019ll keep our promises,\u00a0\u00bb says Chetouane nevertheless. The potential market is huge\u00a0\u2013 around \u20ac60\u00a0billion in 2030, including \u20ac6\u00a0billion for the high-end market targeted by Krystalix, which forecasts turnover of \u20ac6\u00a0million by that date, or even more if a major investor comes forward.<\/p>\n

Krystalix is initially catering for the watchmaking, semiconductor and security industries. In the security sector, being a French player is an advantage. In watchmaking, Krystalix already supplies single crystals in various colours for case middles, crystals and some pivots. Security applications will involve optics for lasers used for guidance and lidars, where purity is essential.<\/p>\n

Patrice Desmedt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meet Krystalix at EPHJ booth L120<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Krystalix revolutionises single-crystal manufacturing The Grenoble-based start-up is one of only two companies in the world, and the only one in Europe, to have mastered cold crucible technology for growing single crystals. It will be used for watchmaking, security and semiconductors. Krystalix, a spin-off from Grenoble INP, was founded in May 2024 by a multidisciplinary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":13132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"edition":[],"class_list":["post-13138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13139,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138\/revisions\/13139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13138"},{"taxonomy":"edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephj.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/edition?post=13138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}