The formation and dynamical behavior of Sn clusters embedded in amorphous, thermally grown SiO 2 layers, formed by ion implantation, is monitored through 119 Sn Mössbauer spectroscopy. We observe an extreme decrease of the cluster Debye temperature D for samples annealed at 800°C in a reducing atmosphere. We show with a model, based on classical elasticity theory, that this lowering can be explained by a decrease of the surface vibrational modes when a Sn microcrystal is embedded in a SiO 2 matrix.
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