I wanted to get some insight in the transient stress intensity factor (SIF).

In the time history, we notice there is an overshoot (~27%)  from the
steady state SIF for a fixed (not propagating crack). I found the
overshoot occurs at the time when the reflected wave from the opposite
crack-tip comes back to the first crack tip. I wanted to know why this
overshoot occurs, what is the physical explanation?

Sandip Haldar 

In practice, the SiN stripes or pads are periodically patterned on silicon, so the spacing effect on dislocation injection from sharp features deserves attention. As in Figure 1, the SiN stripes with residue stress , of width L and thickness h, are periodically patterned with spacing S. In the numerical calculation, we take shear modulus and Poisson’s ratio of Si3N4 to be 54.3 GPa and 0.27, and those of silicon 68.1GPa and 0.22, the same as in Ref.[1].

Stresses inevitably arise in a microelectronic device due to mismatch in coefficients of thermal expansion, mismatch in lattice constants, and growth of materials. Moreover, in the technology of strained silicon devices, stresses have been deliberately introduced to increase carrier mobility. A device usually contains sharp features like edges and corners, which may intensify stresses, inject dislocations into silicon, and fail the device. On the basis of singular stress fields near the sharp features, this letter describes a method to obtain conditions that avert dislocations.