Strain relaxation in an alloy film with a rough free surface

We study strain relief by surface roughness and composition variation in a stressed alloy film. Instead of using common perturbation techniques, we derive a rigorous relaxation formula based on the energy approach in the case of slightly undulating surface and fluctuating composition. We do not require any a priori assumption of elastic isotropy or identical material properties between film and substrate in deriving our result. We show that the change of elastic energy is negative, giving rise to energy relief due to the presence of free surface. We apply our result to the study of compositional and morphological instabilities of a stressed thin layer with a free surface. The critical wave number of instability is determined by the competition between the destabilizing influence of elastic strain energy and the stabilizing influence of chemical and surface energies.