Morphological stability of epitaxial thin elastic films by van der Waals force

Summary  The morphological stability of epitaxial thin elastic films on a substrate by van der Waals force is discussed. It is found that only van der Waals force with negative Hamaker constant tends to stabilize the film, and the lower bound for the Hamaker constant is also obtained for the stability of thin film. The critical value of the undulation wavelength is found to be a function of both film thickness and external stress. The charateristic time-scale for surface mass diffusion scales to the fourth power to the wavelength of the perturbation. Received 4 December 2000; accepted for publication 31 July 2001