Paul Baral

Abstract Amorphous alumina is hard but brittle like all ceramic type materials which affects durability under impact or scratch. Here we show that alumina layers below 100 nm thickness when stacked with aluminum interlayers exhibit exceptional performances including toughness equal to 300 J.m−2 determined by on chip nanomechanics. This is almost two orders of magnitude higher than bulk alumina and higher than any other thin hard coatings.

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