Comment on "Extreme lowering of the Debye temperature of Sn nanoclusters embedded in thermally grown SiO2 by low-lying vibrational surface modes"

TL;DR

This paper corrects previous errors in calculating vibrational mode frequencies of tin nanoclusters embedded in silica, clarifying the impact of embedding on vibrational properties and Debye temperature.

Contribution

It identifies and corrects two specific errors in prior calculations of vibrational modes of tin nanoclusters in silica matrices.

Findings

Corrected vibrational frequency calculations for free tin spheres.

Revised understanding of vibrational mode shifts due to embedding.

Implications for Debye temperature estimations in nanoclusters.

Abstract

This Comment corrects two separate errors which previously appeared in the calculation of vibrational mode frequencies of tin spheres embedded in a silica matrix. The first error has to do with the vibrational frequency of a free elastic sphere. The second error has to do with the effect on the vibrational frequencies of a sphere due to its embedding in an infinite elastic matrix.