Thermal expansion of quaternary nitride coatings

J Phys Condens Matter. 2018 Apr 4;30(13):135901. doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/aab0b8. Epub 2018 Feb 20.

Abstract

The thermal expansion coefficient of technologically relevant multicomponent cubic nitride alloys are predicted using the Debye model with ab initio elastic constants calculated at 0 K and an isotropic approximation for the Grüneisen parameter. Our method is benchmarked against measured thermal expansion of TiN and Ti(1-x)Al x N as well as against results of molecular dynamics simulations. We show that the thermal expansion coefficients of Ti(1-x-y)X y Al x N (X = Zr, Hf, Nb, V, Ta) solid solutions monotonously increase with the amount of alloying element X at all temperatures except for Zr and Hf, for which they instead decrease for [Formula: see text].