Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
The behavior of electron and phonon excitations in systems with irregular boundaries is discussed on the specific example of prefractal shapes. We show that both electron states and acoustical phonons exhibit localization properties. This effect is stronger when the fractality of the shape is increased. In consequence the electron-phonon interaction in small crystallites should be strongly dependent on their shape or roughness. This localization could play a role in the thermal properties of glasses where internal partial crytallization has no reason to build pseudo-crytalline entities which should be smooth.