Whole industries currently rely on bulk-grown crystals of a variety of materials. These industries range from information technology, based on the ubiquitous silicon, through radiofrequency applications, using gallium arsenide, etc.,'to telecommunications and lighting, based on III-V compounds, to infrared imaging, based on cadmium mercury telluride, and to high-energy physics and medical imaging using scintillator materials. These materials are used either in the active mode, as for silicon, or in the passive mode where the bulk-grown material is used as a substrate on which to deposit a wide range of binary, ternary, quaternary, etc., compounds by several epitaxial growth processes.

Imagine a tropical morning on the ocean. The air is comfortably warm and moist, but it is not muggy or hot; scattered clouds are slightly pink with the last colors of dawn as the sun glares orange, low on the eastern horizon. The ocean on which you are fl oating is deep blue, and the surface waves are only a few feet high.

Carbon in Earth’s fluid envelopes—the atmosphere and hydrosphere—plays a fundamental role in our planet’s climate system. It is also essential for the origin and evolution of life, for a large fraction of the energy we use, and for the multitude of carbon‐based materials so essential to the modern world. Yet the source and original quantity of carbon in our planet is uncertain (Marty et al., 2013), as are the identities and relative importance of early chemical processes associated with planetary differentiation (e.g., the moon‐forming impact, core formation, the onset of plate tectonics). Numerous lines of evidence point to the early and continuing exchange of substantial carbon between Earth’s surface and its interior (Dasgupta, 2013), such as information carried by subducted carbon trapped in diamonds, mantle‐derived magmas rich in carbon, carbonate‐bearing rocks found in fossil subduction zones, and springs carrying deeply sourced carbon‐bearing gases (Burton et al., 2013; Jones et al., 2013; Ni & Keppler, 2013; Shirey et al., 2013). Although quantifying the input and output fluxes is challenging, there is little doubt that a substantial amount of carbon resides in our planet’s interior (Dasgupta and Hirschmann, 2010, Kelemen & Manning, 2015). 

This book was initiated by a study conducted at Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences for Shell Research. For the present book this study has been considerably enlarged and modified. The book has benefited from discussions with numerous colleagues, and numerous colleagues have provided us with unpublished data and information. Without this support, this book would not have been possible.