Experimental evidence was obtained, for GaAs/Ge, which demonstrated the high metastability of films having a thickness which was far above the critical thickness predicted by the Matthews-Blakeslee model for relaxation in semiconductors. In addition, a dislocation-blocking mechanism was found. Both features were related to misfit behaviour and misfit dislocation glide as a function of temperature. It was shown that it was necessary to take account of the possibility that the misfit dislocations did not lie entirely in the glide planes, and that the mobility of point defects had to be considered in order to explain their development. The movement of misfit dislocations was controlled by a critical length which lay in the glide plane, and it was this thickness which had to be compared with the critical thickness, rather than the overall layer thickness.

Metastability in the Matthews-Blakeslee Mechanism for Semiconductor Film Relaxation. M.Putero-Vuaroqueaux, N.Burle, B.Pichaud: Philosophical Magazine Letters, 2001, 81[8], 519-25