An innovative compliant GaAs substrate was formed by wafer bonding a 30 Å GaAs layer to a bulk GaAs crystal with a large angular misalignment inserted about their common normals. InSb epitaxial layers, which is about 15&percent; lattice mismatched to GaAs, have been grown on both compliant substrates and conventional GaAs substrates. Transmission electron microscopy studies showed that the InSb films grown on the compliant substrates have no measurable threading dislocations, whereas the InSb films on the conventional GaAs substrates exhibited dislocation densities as high as1011 cm−2.The observations made here suggest that the defect-free heteroepitaxial growth of exceedingly large lattice-mismatched crystals can be achieved with compliant universal substrates. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.