Raman study of structural relaxation and boson peak in amorphous films of adamantane

Low-frequency Raman scattering was used to study amorphous solid films of adamantane, a globular non-polar hydrocarbon molecule. As evidenced by its spectral characteristics this type of disorder is different from the orientational disorder found in the room temperature plastic phase by the absence of the translational order as well. This gives rise to the boson peak related to acoustic phonons which gradually disappears upon heating with simultaneous emerging of the phonon line at 50 cm-1 which characterizes the low-temperature ordered phase of adamantane. Adamantane dynamics resembles that of C60 fullerene although not in the same temperature range. All this makes adamantane an attractive system that could serve as a practical reference in molecular simulation studies of the glassy phase of model fluids.