The role of dislocation-dislocation interactions in the relaxation of pseudomorphically strained semiconductors. I. Theory

The role of dislocation-dislocation interactions on the relaxation behavior of biaxially stressed semiconductor thin films is considered by including interaction terms in an energy minimization. Both parallel and crossing interactions are considered and energies are calculated for orthogonal arrays of equally spaced 60°misfit dislocations, and it is shown that the parallel interactions can be either attractive or repulsive. The equilibrium misfit dislocation density is shown to be a function of the "cutoff" distance for dislocation interactions in these structures.