PURPOSE: To readily control the movement of solute element in growing liquid by contacting a source material, supplying an AC current between the source material and the liquid to generate heat, and dissolving the source material in the liquid.

CONSTITUTION: An AC current is supplied from an AC power source S though carbon electrodes 13, 14 between a source material 12 and multi-element compound semiconductor crystal growing liquid 2 to heat the material 12. Then, the material 12 is heated in the state that the heat due to Peltier effect is partly added to the Joule heat due to the resistance of the material 12 itself. When solute element dissolved from the material moves in the solution to arrive at a grown crystal at this time, the movement of the element becomes only due to diffusing effect and convection effect, and an effect due to an electromigration is removed. Thus, the moving control in the liquid of the solute element can be facilitated.