  Motivated by an increasing demand for coherent data that can be used for
selecting materials with properties tailored for specific application
requirements, we studied elastic response of nine binary early transition metal
nitrides (ScN, TiN, VN, YN, ZrN, NbN, LaN, HfN, and TaN) and AlN. In
particular, single crystal elastic constants, Young's modulus in different
crystallographic directions, polycrystalline values of shear and Young's
moduli, and the elastic anisotropy factor were calculated. Additionally, we
provide estimates of the third order elastic constants for the ten binary
nitrides.
