Hardness, Young’s Modulus and Elastic Recovery in Magnetron Sputtered Amorphous AlMgB14 Films

We report optical and mechanical properties of hard aluminum magnesium boride films magnetron sputtered from a stoichiometric AlMgB14 ceramic target onto Corning® 1737 Glass and Si (100) wafers. High target sputtering rf-power and sufficiently short target-to-substrate distance appeared to be critical processing conditions. Amorphous AlMgB14 films demonstrate very strong indentation size effect (ISE): exceptionally high nanohardness H = 88 GPa and elastic Young’s modulus E* = 517 GPa at 26 nm of the diamond probe penetration depth and almost constant values, respectively, of about 35 GPa and 275 GPa starting at depths of about 2–3% of films’ thickness. For comparative analysis of elastic strain to failure index H/E*, resistance to plastic deformation ratio H3/E*2 and elastic recovery ratio We were obtained in nanoindentation tests performed in a wide range of loading forces from 0.5 to 40 mN. High authentic numerical values of H = 50 GPa and E* = 340 GPa correlate with as low as only 10% of total energy dissipating through the plastic deformations.