Plastic relaxation was observed in InᵡGa₁â ᵡN/GaN epilayers grown on c-plane sapphire substrates. The relaxation obeys the universal hyperbolic relation between the strain and the reciprocal of the layer thickness. Plastic relaxation in this material system reveals that there is no discontinuous relaxation at critical thickness and once a layer starts to relieve, it follows the same strain-thickness dependence, unconstrained by the original misfit until the material system work hardens. From x-ray diffraction calibration, the in-plane and normal relaxation constants KP0 and KN0 for the InᵡGa₁â ᵡN/GaN grown on sapphire were found to be â 0.98 ± 0.03 and +0.51 ± 0.03 nm, respectively.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)