Compliant Substrates for Reduction of Strain Relief in Mismatched Overlayers

Thin film compliant substrates can be used to extend the critical thickness in mismatched overlayers. A metastability model has been coupled with recent experimental strain relief data to determine the critical thickness of InGaAs epilayers grown on GaAs compliant substrates of variable thickness. The results of this model are also compared to other compliant substrate critical thickness models.