During the growth of float-zoning (FZ) and Czochralski (CZ) Si crystals, the temperature distributions from the growth interface were measured using a two-color infrared thermometer for the FZ crystal surfaces and three thermocouples within the CZ bulk crystals. The results showed that the thermal gradient is a decreasing function of the growth rate, which forms the basis of this work. In a comparison of the shape variations in the growth interfaces observed in both FZ and CZ crystals of three different diameters, all of the results were in agreement with the above premise. In consideration of Stefan's condition the premise above is discussed. One of the most important observations is that the region of increasing thermal gradient extends not only to the region grown before but also to the region afterward by stopping the pulling in FZ crystals or lowering the growth rate in CZ crystals. This phenomenon is termed the "BA (before and after) effect". The growing CZ crystals are detached from the melt and rapidly cooled so that the point defects are frozen. Using the anomalous oxygen precipitation (AOP) phenomenon obtained by the above detaching, which demonstrates the existence of vacancies in the crystal, we found that the growth interface is always filled with vacancies. By increasing the thermal gradient, which can be controlled by lowering the growth rate, the vacancy (AOP) region is reduced, due to the generation of a silicon interstitial-rich region. The ratio of vacancies from the growth interface and silicon interstitials generated by the thermal gradient ultimately determines the nature of the bulk silicon crystal grown from the melt, i.e., with voids, defect-free or with dislocation loops. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.