Correlation of microhardness and microbrittleness of refractory compounds with their electronic structure

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The microhardness and microbrittleness of refractory metal carbides were measured on individual powder particles. The authors introduce a microhardness index defined as the product of the reciprocal of the optimum load by the variation of over-all brittleness index with increase in load. It is assumed that microhardness and microbrittleness of the investigated refractory materials are determined essentially by the statistical weight of the stable electronic configurations of metal and nonmetal atoms, and by the proportion of electrons transferred to the collectivized state.