Electron Hopping Conduction in the Soliton Model of Polyacetylene

Abstract

It is shown that at low temperatures, phonon-assisted electron hopping between soliton bound states may be the dominant conduction process in a lightly doped, one-dimensional Peierls system such as polyacetylene. The presence of disorder, as represented by a spatially random distribution of charged dopant molecules, causes the hopping-conduction pathways to be essentially three dimensional. Calculated values of the conductivity, thermopower, and transverse spin diffusion constant compare favorably with experiment.