We have decided to discontinue the publication of preprints on our preprint server end of 2024. The publication culture within mathematics has changed so much due to the rise of repositories such as ArXiV (www.arxiv.org) that we are encouraging all institute members to make their preprints available there. An institute's repository in its previous form is, therefore, unnecessary. The preprints published to date will remain available here, but we will not add any new preprints here.
We give a rigorous derivation of continuum theory from atomic models for thin films as proposed by Friesecke and James in [JMPS 48 (2000)]. The resulting continuum energy expression is obtained by integrating a stored energy density which not only depends on the deformation gradient but also on