First-Principles Study on Elastic Anomalies in Ag/Al Multilayers

Using the first-principles calculation, the elastic constant C44 of Ag/Al multilayers with different modulation periods from 0.43 nm to 2.27 nm has been evaluated in order to examine the effect of atomic and electronic structures on it. With increasing modulation period, C44 decreases and becomes close to that obtained by the conventional mixing rule, however, the difference of 8 % still remains at the modulation period of 2.27 nm. As C44 correlates with the average interplanar spacing, the decrease of C44 can be explained by the decrease of the charge density in the stacking direction due to the increase of the average interplanar spacing. The difference in the electronic structure is included in the effect of atomic structure.