Solitons And Polarons In Quasi One Dimensional Conducting Polymers And Related Materials

In recent years it has become increasingly appreciated that fundamentally nonlinear excitations - solitons - play an essential role in an incredible variety of natural systems. These solitons, which frequently exhibit remarkable stability under interactions and perturbations, often dominate the transport, response, or structural properties of the systems in which they occur. In this article, we present an introduction to the solitons that occur in quasi-one-dimensional conducting polymers (synmetals) and related systems. The relevance of this subject to molecular electronic devices is twofold. First, many of these materials have molecular structures similar to possible prototype molecular switches. Second, to understand in detail how a molecular electronic device could work, it is essential to have a broad perspective on the nature of possible excitations in a variety of natural and synthetic molecular materials. 51 references.