Insulator-to-metal transition driven by clustering of solitons in polyacetylene

Abstract

It's believed that the simple Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Hamiltonian can not predict the insulator to metal transition of trans-polyacetylene (t-PA). The soliton lattice configuration at a doping level y=6% still has a semiconductor gap. Disordered distributions of solitons close the gap, but the electronic states around the Fermi energy are localized. However, within the same framework, it is possible to show that a cluster of solitons can produce dramatic changes in the electronic structure, allowing an insulator-to-metal transition.