2011/07/28 by Jeremy D. Schmit, Schmit, Jeremy D., A. Levine +1
Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #FOS: Physical sciences #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1107.5622
openalex publication_date 2011/07/28 · openalex created_date 2022/10/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Conjugated polymers are soft, one-dimensional conductors that admit complex\ninteractions between their polymeric, conformational degrees of freedom and\ntheir electronic ones. The presence of extended electronic states along their\nbackbone allows for inter-chain electronic tunneling at points where these\npolymers make near passes. Using a combination of analytic modeling and\nHartree-Fock numerical calculations, we study the localized electronic states\nthat form due to such close encounters between semiconducting conjugated\npolymers and explore how these states lead to chain--chain binding. We also\nstudy the interaction of these inter-chain binding sites with solitonic\nexcitations on the chains. From these results and a modified Poland-Scheraga\nmodel, we determine the equilibrium structures of paired-chains formed by\nintermolecular electronic tunneling. We calculate the energetic ground state of\nsuch pairs and show the effective thermal persistence length of the paired\nchains can vary over an order of magnitude due to the intermolecular binding\nmechanism.\n