Forcing polymers to be semiconductors In mechanochemistry, the application of force to a polymer is used to pry open specific chemical bonds. Chen et al. leveraged this technique to produce semiconducting blocks of polyacetylene in an insulating precursor. Ring-opening metathesis polymerization tethered together a series of fused fourcarbon rings, reminiscent of the unusual ladderane membrane l...

'The dynamics of trans-polyacetylene is studied within the adiabatic model of Su, Schrieffer, and Beeper. A single soliton has a maximum velocity, v, which can be higher than the sound velocity. A long-time simulation shows that, from an initial electron-hole pair, a soliton and antisoliton emerge with velocities +v and that a persistent breather is left behind. 'This breather may account for t...

Electronic coherence dynamics in trans-polyacetylene oligomers are considered by explicitly computing the time dependent molecular polarization from the coupled dynamics of electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom in a mean-field mixed quantum-classical approximation. The oligomers are described by the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Hamiltonian and the effect of decoherence is incorporated by propag...

The optical reflectance of polyacetylene doped with high concentrations of potassium has been measured, and the optical properties estimated by Kramers–Kronig analysis. The samples, doped by a vapor-phase technique to y ≈ 0.08 and 0.18, showed strong doping-induced infrared absorption at ∼900, 1270, and 1390 cm−1. These experiments were motivated by calculations of the infrared absorption which...