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Critical thickness hc has been calculated for capped and uncapped lattice mismatched II–VI semiconductor epilayers. Both the old equilibrium theory and the improved theory have been used. The calculated values are compared with the experimental data on epilayers of several II–VI semiconductors and alloys. The observed values of hc are larger than the calculated values, a result similar to that observed with GeSi and InGaAs strained layers. The discrepancy is attributed to the difficulty in nucleating the dislocations. Strain relaxation in layers with thickness h>hc is also calculated. Observed strain relaxation in ZnSe layers grown on (100) GaAs shows good agreement with the equilibrium theory. In other cases, the observed relaxation is sluggish and the residual strain is larger than the calculated value. Many authors have observed that strain near the surface of the II–VI epilayers is small and increases as the depth increases. We describe an improved model to explain this observation. The agreement between the prediction of our model and the observed strain distribution is excellent. A new model based on continuum elasticity theory is described to explain strain oscillations during the initial stages of growth of highly mismatched layers. In highly mismatched layers, the dislocations are distributed uniformly. A model to interpret this observation is suggested.

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The combined effect of the misfit strain and the strain caused by a neighboring defect on the activation energy of nucleation of dislocation loops is calculated. Defects of different sizes and shapes and located at different distances from the loop are considered. At very low mismatches (<0.5%) and with very small defects, the activation energy is not sufficiently reduced and large layer thicknesses are required for nucleation. At mismatches of 1% or more, and with defect sizes of 1.5 nm or larger, heterogeneous nucleation at growth temperatures becomes possible. These defects are more efficient in reducing the energy when they are at the center of the loop. Though impurities located within the core of the dislocations can reduce the core parameter substantially and therefore reduce the activation energy, in practice this is unlikely to occur. Very large defects such as SiO2 and SiC precipitates reduce the activation energy of nucleation over large distances thereby inducing the nucleation of several loops which results in very rapid relaxation of strain. In highly mismatched layers (4%–8%) homogeneous nucleation occurs at about 400–500 °C. Why the periodic arrangement of misfit dislocations is observed only in the highly mismatched layers is explained.

The interaction energy EirrI of arrays of dislocations with nonperiodic (or irregular) distribution is calculated. The calculations have been made for uniform-random and Gaussian distributions of dislocations. The method used is, however, general and can also be applied to any arbitrary or an observed distribution of dislocations. The results for several values of average spacing p̄ and standard deviation σ are given and are compared with the energy EI of periodic arrays with spacing p=p̄. The total energy EirrT of strained layers containing nonperiodic dislocation arrays is also calculated. The results for both 90° and 60° dislocations are given. For sufficiently large numbers of dislocations, EirrI is always larger than EI. The difference between the energies EirrI and EI increases rapidly as the standard deviation σ of the nonperiodic distribution increases. The equilibrium strain relaxation in thick layers and the strain relaxation on annealing the metastable layers are usually calculated by modeling the nonperiodic array as an equivalent periodic array with p=p̄. It is found that this procedure for the calculation of the strain relaxation is not valid.