We developed an automatic feedback control system of the crystal-melt interface position to keep the temperature at the interface constant during growth, and demonstrate its successful application to grow Ge-rich SiGe bulk crystals with uniform composition. In this system, the position of the crystal-melt interface was automatically detected by analyzing the images captured,using in situ monitoring system based on charge-coupled-devices camera, and the pulling rate of the crucible was corrected at every 1 min. The system was found to be effective to keep the crystal-melt interface position during growth even when the variation of the growth rate is quite large. Especially, the interface position was kept for 470 h during growth of Ge-rich SiGe bulk crystal when we started with a long growth melt of 80 mm. As a result, a 23 mm-long Si(0.22)Geo(0.78) bulk crystal with uniform composition was obtained thanks to the constancy of the growth temperature during growth through the control of the interface position. Our technique opens a possibility to put multicomponent bulk crystal in a practical use. (C) 2002 Elsevier.Science B.V. All rights reserved.