Topological advantage for adsorbate chemisorption on conjugated chains

TL;DR

This study reveals how the topological phase of a conjugated chain influences adsorbate charge transfer and electronic friction, highlighting the potential for topological matter in catalysis and sensing applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of topological phases on adsorbate interactions, showing how edge and soliton states enhance charge donation and modify friction, with implications for molecular engineering.

Findings

Localized midgap states enhance electron donation.

Electronic friction varies with topological phase.

Topological boundaries offer robust pathways for molecular interactions.

Abstract

Topological matter offers opportunities for control of charge and energy flow with implications for chemistry still incompletely understood. In this work, we study an ensemble of adsorbates with an empty frontier level (LUMO) coupled to the edges, domain walls (solitons), and bulk of a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger polyacetylene chain across its trivial insulator, metallic, and topological insulator phases. We find that two experimentally relevant observables, charge donation into the LUMO and the magnitude of adsorbate electronic friction, are significantly impacted by the electronic phase of the SSH chain and show clear signatures of the topological phase transition. Localized, symmetry-protected midgap states at edges and solitons strongly enhance electron donation relative to both the metallic and trivial phases, whereas by contrast, the metal's extended states, despite larger total DOS near the Fermi energy, hybridize more weakly with a molecular adsorbate near a particular site. Electronic friction is largest in the metal, strongly suppressed in gapped regions, and intermediate at topological edges where hybridization splits the midgap resonance. These trends persist with disorder highlighting their robustness and suggest engineering domain walls and topological boundaries as pathways for employing topological matter in molecular catalysis and sensing.