The self-organized nanostructures of Zn 1 - x Cd x Se were fabricated on the (110)-oriented GaAs whose surface was obtained by cleaving under ultra high vacuum (UHV) in the chamber of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The surface steps produced by cleaving process and the ridges transformed from the wetting layers are preferred nucleation sites for adatoms resulting in linearly arranged islands. Such ridges or step edges act as the sink of adatoms, inhibiting island nucleation to produce the depletion regions at both its sides. The orientation-dependent sticking coefficient of adatoms and dangling bonds at the step edges, and the periodic strain distributions on the ridges are suggested to account for the preferred nucleation of the islands.