Charge Redistribution and Spin Polarization Driven by Correlation Induced Electron Exchange in Chiral Molecules

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that electron correlations and molecular vibrations induce charge redistribution and spin polarization in chiral molecules on metal surfaces, offering new insights into chiral-induced spin selectivity.

Contribution

It introduces a model showing how vibrationally induced charge redistribution leads to spin polarization and enantiomer separation in chiral molecules on metals, emphasizing electron correlations.

Findings

Vibrations cause charge redistribution in chiral molecules.

Charge redistribution leads to spin polarization.

Enantiomer separation is explained by the model.

Abstract

Chiral induced spin selectivity is a phenomenon that has been attributed to chirality, spin-orbit interactions, and non-equilibrium conditions, while the role of electron exchange and correlations have been investigated only marginally until very recently. However, as recent experiments show that chiral molecules acquire a finite spin-polarization merely by being in contact with a metallic surface, these results suggest that electron correlations play a more crucial role for the emergence of the phenomenon than previously thought. Here, it is demonstrated that molecular vibrations give rise to molecular charge redistribution and accompanied spin-polarization when coupling a chiral molecule to a non-magnetic metal. It is, moreover, shown that enantiomer separation, due to spin-polarization intimately related to the chirality, can be understood in terms of the proposed model.