| Summary: | We report optical and mechanical properties of hard aluminum magnesium boride films magnetron sputtered from a stoichiometric AlMgB<sub>14</sub> ceramic target onto Corning<sup>®</sup> 1737 Glass and Si (100) wafers. High target sputtering rf-power and sufficiently short target-to-substrate distance appeared to be critical processing conditions. Amorphous AlMgB<sub>14</sub> films demonstrate very strong indentation size effect (ISE): exceptionally high nanohardness <i>H </i>= 88 GPa and elastic Young’s modulus <em>E<sup>∗ </sup></em>= 517 GPa at 26 nm of the diamond probe penetration depth and almost constant values, respectively, of about 35 GPa and 275 GPa starting at depths of about 2–3% of films’ thickness. For comparative analysis of elastic strain to failure index <em>H</em><sup>3</sup>/<em>E<sup>∗</sup></em>, resistance to plastic deformation ratio <em>H</em><sup>3</sup>/<em>E<sup>∗2 </sup></em>and elastic recovery ratio <em>W<sub>e </sub></em>were obtained in nanoindentation tests performed in a wide range of loading forces from 0.5 to 40 mN. High authentic numerical values of <i>H = </i>50 GPa and <em>E<sup>∗ </sup></em>= 340 GPa correlate with as low as only 10% of total energy dissipating through the plastic deformations.
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