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Spin-orbit coupling in singly charged pi-conjugated polymers
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Spin-orbit coupling in singly charged pi-conjugated polymers

J. Rybicki and M. Wohlgenannt
Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics, Vol.79(15), 153202
04/01/2009
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.79.153202

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Abstract

Understanding spin-orbit coupling in singly charged pi-conjugated polymer chains is of basic importance to the study of spin transport in organic semiconductors. We show that the spin-orbit coupling is quenched to first order because the diagonal matrix elements vanish and the energy levels in polymers are orbitally nondegenerate. Even the off-diagonal matrix elements are zero or negligibly small unless a twisted nonplanar polymer chain is considered. For such a twisted chain, we calculate these matrix elements using tight-binding wave functions based on p(z) orbitals. We show that the Kramers degeneracy prevents the spin-orbit-induced spin precession. Instead, we propose a phonon-assisted spin-flip process and calculate its rate.
Materials Science Physical Sciences Physics Technology Materials Science, Multidisciplinary Physics, Applied Physics, Condensed Matter Science & Technology

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