An affine transformation description of epitaxial heterostructures

The matching at the interface between the substrate and the film in an epitaxial deposit has been analyzed and explained very well in the literature for the various fcc-bcc metallic systems by the use of the energy minimization criteria such as invariant line criterion, the O-lattice approach etc. Though many orientation relationships have been reported for other crystal structures and non-metals, very little effort has been made to explain these relationships. Here, we attempt to rationalize the orientation relationships that we have obtained and which others have reported for epitaxial suicides using the above mentioned criteria.