Comments on “Hardness, elasticity, and fracture toughness of polycrystalline spinel germanium nitride and tin nitride,” by M.P. Shemkunas, W.T. Petuskey, A.V.G. Chizmeshya, K. Leinenweber, and G.H. Wolf [J. Mater. Res. 19, 1392 (2004)]: Reestablishing of elastic moduli for γ-Ge3N4
Résumé
It will be shown that in the considered paper, a mistake occurred by handling or editing of experimental data for one of two investigated materials, namely, for cubic germanium nitride having spinel structure (γ-Ge3N4). This mistake led to incorrect values of the shear modulus G0, Young’s modulus E0, and Poisson’s ratio ν0 of this compound. My effort to recover the elastic moduli of γ-Ge3N4 from the available data gave the following results: G0=124 GPa, E0=326 GPa, and ν0=0.32.