Effect of alloying on elastic properties of ZrN based transition metal nitride alloys

We report the effect of composition and metal sublattice substitutional element on the structural, elastic and electronic properties of ternary transition metal nitrides Zr1 − xMxN with M = Al, Ti, Hf, V, Nb, W and Mo. The analysis of the elastic constants, bulk modulus, shear modulus, Young's modulus, and Poisson's ratio provides insights regarding the mechanical behavior of Zr1 − xMxN. We predict that ternary alloys are more ductile compared to their parent binary compounds. The revealed trend in the mechanical behavior might help for experimentalists on the ability of tuning the mechanical properties during the alloying process by varying the concentration of the transition metal.