Elastic properties of mono- and polycrystalline hexagonal AlB2-like diborides of s, p and d metals from first-principles calculations

We have performed accurate ab initio total energy calculations using the full-potential linearized augmented plane-wave (FP-LAPW) method with the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) for the exchange-correlation potential to systematically investigate elastic properties of 18 stable, metastable and hypothetical hexagonal (AlB2-like) metal diborides MB2, where M = Na, Be, Mg, Ca, Al, Sc, Y, Ti, Zr, Hf, V, Nb, Ta, Cr, Mo, W, Ag and Au. For monocrystalline MB2, the optimized lattice parameters, independent elastic constants (C-ij), bulk moduli (B) and shear moduli (G) are obtained and analyzed in comparison with the available theoretical and experimental data. For the first time, numerical estimates of a set of elastic parameters of the polycrystalline MB2 ceramics (in the framework of the Voigt-Reuss-Hill approximation), namely bulk and shear moduli, compressibility (beta), Young's modulus (Y), Poisson's ratio (nu) and Lam e coefficients (mu, lambda),areperformed.