We report on the correlation between the boson peak and the structural changes associated with thermally treating amorphous indium-oxide films. In this process, the resistance of a given sample may decrease by a considerable margin whereas its amorphous structure is preserved. In the present paper, we focus on the changes that result from the heat treatment by employing electron-microscopy, x-ray, and Raman spectroscopy. These techniques were used on films with different stoichiometry and, thus, different carrier concentrations. The main effect of heat treatment is material densification, which presumably results from elimination of microvoids. The densified system presents better wave-function overlap and more efficient connectivity for the current flow. X-ray and electron-beam diffraction experiments indicate that the heat-treated samples show significantly less spatial heterogeneity with only a moderate change in the radial-distribution function metrics. These results are consistent with the changes that occur in the boson-peak characteristics due to annealing as observed in their Raman spectra.

中文翻译：

---

热处理 InxOfilms 中的微观结构和玻色子峰

我们报告了玻色子峰与与热处理非晶氧化铟膜相关的结构变化之间的相关性。在这个过程中，给定样品的电阻可能会降低相当大的幅度，而其非晶结构却得以保留。在本文中，我们通过使用电子显微镜、X 射线和拉曼光谱来关注热处理引起的变化。这些技术用于具有不同化学计量的薄膜，因此具有不同的载流子浓度。热处理的主要作用是材料致密化，这可能是消除微孔的结果。致密的系统呈现出更好的波函数重叠和更有效的电流连通性。X 射线和电子束衍射实验表明，经过热处理的样品显示出显着较小的空间异质性，径向分布函数指标仅发生适度变化。这些结果与在其拉曼光谱中观察到的由于退火而在玻色子峰特性中发生的变化一致。