Elastic properties of Cr2AlC thin films probed by nanoindentation and ab initio molecular dynamics

The reported experimentally determined bulk modulus for Cr2AlC is 28–40% lower than the value obtained by ab initio calculations. To identify the origin of this extensive difference between theory and experiment, the elastic modulus of thin Cr2AlC films was measured by nanoindentation and the temperature dependence thereof was studied by ab initio molecular dynamics. Our experimental and theoretical elastic modulus data are within the expected error margin and hence consistent with the published ab initio data.