Strength and toughness anisotropy in hexagonal boron nitride: An atomistic picture

Strength and toughness are two crucial mechanical properties of a solid that determine its ability to function reliably without undergoing failure in extreme conditions. While hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is known to be elastically isotropic in the linear regime of mechanical deformation, its directional response to extreme mechanical loading remains less understood. Here, using a combination of density functional theory calculations and molecular dynamics simulations, we show that strength and crack nucleation toughness of pristine hBN are strongly anisotropic and chirality dependent. They vary nonlinearly with the chirality of the lattice under symmetry breaking deformation, and the anisotropic behavior is retained over a large temperature range with a decreasing trend at higher temperatures. An atomistic analysis reveals that bond deformation and associated distortion of electron density are nonuniform in the nonlinear regime of mechanical deformation, irrespective of the loading direction. This nonuniformity forms the physical basis for the observed anisotropy under static conditions, whereas reduction in nonuniformity and thermal softening reduce anisotropy at higher temperatures. The chirality-dependent anisotropic effects are well predicted by inverse cubic polynomials.