Hardness of Covalent Crystals

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Hardness of Covalent Crystals

Faming Gao, Julong He, Erdong Wu, Shimin Liu, Dongli Yu, Dongchun Li, Siyuan Zhang, and Yongjun Tian

Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 015502 – Published 2 July 2003

Abstract

Based on the idea that the hardness of covalent crystal is intrinsic and equivalent to the sum of the resistance to the indenter of each bond per unit area, a semiempirical method for the evaluation of hardness of multicomponent crystals is presented. Applied to $β − {B C}_{2} N$ crystal, the predicted value of hardness is in good agreement with the experimental value. It is found that bond density or electronic density, bond length, and degree of covalent bonding are three determinative factors for the hardness of a polar covalent crystal. Our method offers the advantage of applicability to a broad class of materials and initializes a link between macroscopic property and electronic structure from first principles calculation.

Received 17 January 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.015502

Authors & Affiliations

Faming Gao¹, Julong He¹, Erdong Wu², Shimin Liu¹, Dongli Yu¹, Dongchun Li¹, Siyuan Zhang³, and Yongjun Tian^1,4,*

¹Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China
²Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
³Laboratory of Rare Earth Chemistry and Physics, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, China
⁴Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210008, China

^*Email address: fhcl@ysu.edu.cn

Chipping Away at Hardness

JR Minkel

Phys. Rev. Focus 12, 1 (2003)

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Issue

Vol. 91, Iss. 1 — 4 July 2003

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