Ultrahigh hardness and synergistic mechanism of a nanotwinned structure of cadmium zinc telluride

Nanotwinned (nt) cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe or CZT) was fabricated using nanoindentation at room temperature. The nt-CZT exhibits a high hardness of up to 80.7 GPa, which is two orders of magnitude higher than that of its monocrystalline counterparts. The ultrahigh hardness of nt-CZT originates from the synergistic mechanism of a repeated nt pattern, where a lamellar twin with thickness >12.7 nm is followed by one or several twins with thicknesses <12.7 nm.