On-surface synthesis enables soliton states for odd-membered polymers

A new on-surface chemical reaction enables the appearance of solitons in π-conjugated polymers. The reaction, called indenyl coupling, reveals that structural parity drives the appearance of solitons in odd-membered π conjugated polymers. The results are a collaboration among scientists at IMDEA Nanociencia, CiQUS (Spain) and the Czech Academy of Science.