“…As the CVD and solid-state reactions [160,166,167] used for thin-film synthesis methods are processes running close to thermodynamic equilibrium, they are nearer to the bulk synthesis methods than to physical vapour deposition (PVD) methods. In recent years, several researchers have in addition synthesised a wide range of MAX phases compositions [7,9,10,53,60,74,77,113,152,156,[168][169][170][171][172][173][174][175][176][177] and, in particular, Cr 2 AlC [7,9,71,74,77,113,156,168,176,[178][179][180][181] either by sputtering from elemental targets of the Cr 2 AlC-MAX phases or compound targets or by reactive sputtering or by using magnetron sputtering [7,9,30,31,74,77,113,168]. For laboratory-scale synthesis, the use of three elemental targets has proven to be a reliable method for the synthesis of the MAX carbides.…”