For the single crystal growth of an oxide, the global analysis of heat transfer in the inductively heated Czochralski (CZ) furnace was carried out to investigate the effect of optical properties of crystal on the CZ crystal growth process. Here, the finite volume method (FVM) was used as the radiative transfer model to solve the radiative transfer equation, and consequently the crystal with a relatively thin optical thickness (similar to0.01) could be accounted for. As a result, it was found that the melt/crystal interface becomes more convex toward the melt for a small crystal rotational Reynolds number as the optical thickness of the crystal, kappa(s), decreases, although its dependence is slight for kappa(s) < 0.1. In addition, the critical Reynolds number, at which the interface inversion occurs, decreases with the optical thickness of the crystal. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.