ABSTRACT
The size of a singular stress region near an interface edge is
dependent on the film thickness (Becker et al., 1997; Kitamura et al.,
2003). The thinner the film is, the smaller the stress-concentrated
region becomes. In a component of an advanced device, where the
thickness is in the order of several tens of nanometers or less, the
region size must be on a scale of several nanometers. In such a
case, the applicability of the analysis based on continuum theory
is questionable because of the discreteness originating from the
atomic structure (the atomic distance is about 0.2-0.3 nm).
