Analysis of vertical cracking phenomena in tensile-strained epitaxial film on a substrate: Part II. Application to InxGa1-xAs/InP system

Abstract

Cracking phenomena in tensile-strained InxGa1-xAs epitaxial film on an InP substrate are analyzed via the formulation given in Part I [Lee, S., Choi, S.T., Earmme, Y.Y., 2006. Analysis of vertical cracking phenomena in tensile-strained epitaxial film on a substrate: Part I. Mathematical formulation. International Journal of Solids and Structures 43, 3401-3413], where the solution for a dislocation in an anisotropic trimaterial is used as a fundamental solution and the crack is modeled by the continuous distribution of dislocations. Misfit strains and stresses are evaluated as a function of indium content x in an InxGa1-xAs/InP system. A single crack and periodic cracks, respectively, induced by the misfit stresses are considered. The crack opening profile, the crack mouth displacement, and the energy release rate as a function of the crack length are obtained. The critical conditions for a single crack and periodic cracks, respectively, are thus obtained, and are found to depend on the film thickness, the crack length, and the period of the cracks. The results of these analyses are also compared with published data obtained from experiments. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.