The relaxation of compressive biaxial strains in SOS via microtwins

For heteroepitaxial systems, such as silicon on sapphire (SOS), microtwins occur in significant numbers and are thought to contribute to strain relief in the silicon thin film. The size of this contribution can be assessed from TEM measurements, of the differential volume fraction of microtwins, dV/dν (the derivative of the microtwin volume V with respect to the film volume ν), for SOS grown by both chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).In a (001) silicon thin film subjected to compressive stress along the [100] axis , this stress can be relieved by four twinning systems: a/6[211]/( lll), a/6(21l]/(l1l), a/6[21l] /( l1l), and a/6(2ll)/(1ll).3 For the a/6[211]/(1ll) system, the glide of a single a/6[2ll] twinning partial dislocation draws the two halves of the crystal, separated by the microtwin, closer together by a/3.