Elastic and Electronic Properties of TiC and TiN Crystals

Summary A theory for evaluating the temperature variation of second, third and fourth order elastic constants (SOECs, TOECs and FOECs) for face centred cubic crystal structure solids is developed on the basis of Coulomb and Born‐Mayer potential using nearest‐neighbour distance and hardness parameter. The theory thus obtained is first applied to get the higher order elastic constants for TiC and TiN crystals at different temperatures. In addition to elastic properties we have reported electronic properties of these titanium based compounds using Spin Polarised Relativistic Korringa–Kohn–Rostoker (SPR‐KKR) method based on Green Function theory. Energy bands are interpreted in term of density of states. The effect of temperature on higher order elastic constants is discussed in view of the theory proposed. A crossover in energy bands predicts that TiC and TiN are metallic in nature which is in tune with available data.