Analysis of vertical cracking phenomena in tensile-strained epitaxial film on a substrate: Part I. Mathematical formulation

This paper presents an analysis of a single vertical crack and periodically distributed vertical cracks in an epitaxial film on a semi-infinite substrate where the cracks penetrate into the substrate. The film and substrate materials have different anisotropic elastic constants, necessitating Stroh formalism in the analysis. The misfit strain due to the lattice mismatch between the film and the substrate serves as the driving force for crack formation. The solution for a dislocation in an anisotropic trimaterial is used as a Green function, so that the cracks are modeled as the continuous distributions of dislocations to yield the singular integral equations of Cauchy-type. The Gauss–Chebyshev quadrature formula is adopted to solve the singular integral equations numerically. Energy arguments provide the critical condition for crack formation, at which the cracks are energetically favorable configurations, in terms of the ratio of the penetration depth into the substrate to the film thickness, the ratio of the spacing of the periodic cracks to the film thickness, and the generalized Dundurs parameters between the film and substrate materials.