Phonons in a nanoparticle mechanically coupled to a substrate

The discrete nature of the vibrational modes of an isolated nanometer-scale solid dramatically modifies its low-energy electron and phonon dynamics from that of a bulk crystal. However, nanocrystals are usually coupled—even if only weakly so—to an environment consisting of other nanocrystals, a support matrix, or a solid substrate, and this environmental interaction will modify the vibrational properties at low frequencies. In this paper we investigate the modification of the vibrational modes of a spherical insulating nanoparticle caused by a weak mechanical coupling to a semi-infinite substrate. The phonons of the bulk substrate act as a bath of harmonic oscillators, and the coupling to this reservoir shifts and broadens the nanoparticle’s modes. The vibrational density of states in the nanoparticle is obtained by solving the Dyson equation for the phonon propagator, and we show that environmental interaction is especially important at low frequencies. As a probe of the modified phonon spectrum, we consider nonradiative energy relaxation of a localized electronic impurity state in the nanoparticle, for which good agreement with a recent experiment is found.