Gradual relaxation of elastic deformations in a silicon layer at the growth of a covering layer on strained layers was established. The dependence of the thickness of a silicon film, where full elastic strain relaxation occurs, on the germanium layer thickness was determined. The dependence of the critical thickness of 2D-3D transition of temperature and composition of the GeSiSn film on Si(100) was studied. Regularities of the formation of multilayer structures on quantum wells comprising pseudomorphous GeSiSn layers without relaxed buffer layers but creating the structures directly on Si. A possibility of synthesizing multilayer structures by molecular beam epitaxy was shown, and the crystal lattice constants using the high-resolution transmission electron microscopy were determined. Based on multilayer GeSiSn/Si structures the p-i-n-diodes, which demonstrated the photoresponse increasing by several orders of magnitude compared to the Sn-free structures at an increase in the Sn content, were created. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.