A new mechanism was proposed for strain relaxation in buried strained layers. According to this mechanism, a mixture of single and paired misfit dislocations appeared to relax the misfit strain. Corresponding formulae were derived for the excess force and stresses. The free-surface boundary condition, and the interaction and distribution of misfit dislocations, were incorporated into the formulae. The latter could be applied to arbitrary strained heterostructures.

A New Expression of Excess Stress and the Stability of Buried Strained Heterostructures. Z.Jin, S.Yang, H.An, M.Li, S.Liu: Solid-State Electronics, 1999, 43[9], 1735-9