The conformation of conducting polymer chains: Hubbard polymers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electronic properties influence the shape and size of conducting polymer chains, revealing a significant interplay that affects their conformational statistics and overall dimensions.

Contribution

It introduces a Hamiltonian model for conjugated flexible polymers, demonstrating the mutual influence of electronic degrees of freedom and chain conformation.

Findings

Electronic degrees of freedom extend chain size

End-to-end distance scales as R ∝ L^{(d+1)/(d+2)}

Electronic effects significantly alter conformational statistics

Abstract

The conformational and electronic properties of conducting flexible random and self-avoiding walk polymer chains are under investigation. A Hamiltonian for conjugated flexible polymers is introduced and its physical consequences are presented. One important result is that the electronic degrees of freedom greatly affect the conformational statistics of the walks and vice versa. The electronic degrees of freedom extend the size of the chain. The end-to-end distance behaves as $R\propto L^{\nu}$ with $\nu=(d+1)/(d+2)$, where $d$ is the spatial dimension.