Counter-intuitive experimental evidence on the initiation of radical crack in ceramic thin films at the atomic scale

The basic issue related to radial crack in ceramic thin films has received considerable attention due to the fact that the radial crack plays an important role in evaluating the toughness properties of ceramic materials. In this work, an atomic-scale new experimental evidence is clearly presented to reveal the counter-intuitive initiation, the nucleation and the propagation mechanism of the radial crack in Al-Cr-N ceramic thin films. (C) 2015 Author( s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.