A thin polycrystalline film tightly bonded to a thick substrate of different thermal expansion coefficients will experience thermal stresses when the temperature is changed during post-processing such as annealing. Calculations of these stresses and the corresponding strain energies for grains having various crystallographic orientations (h k l) relative to the surface of the film were made for a polycrystalline film composed of the face-centered cubic (FCC) metal Cu, Al, Ag, Au, Ni, Pb and Th, respectively. The abnormal growth of (10 0)-oriented grains and change in texture from (I 1 1) to (10 0) in attached FCC films after annealing have been explained satisfactory from the minimization of the strain energy. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.