Chirality induced topological nature of electrons in DNA-like materials

2020 
Topological aspects of DNA and similar chiral molecules are commonly discussed in geometry, while their electronic structure's topology is less explored. Recent experiments revealed that DNA could efficiently filter spin-polarized electrons, called the chiral-induced spin-selectivity (CISS). However, the underlying correlation between chiral structure and electronic spin remains elusive. In this work, we reveal an orbital texture in the band structure, a topological characteristic induced by the chirality. We find that the orbital texture enables the chiral molecule to polarize the quantum orbital, called the orbital polarization effect (OPE). The OPE induces spin polarization assisted by the spin-orbit interaction only from the metal contact and also leads to magnetism-dependent conductance and chiral separation. Beyond CISS, we predict that OPE can also induce spin-selective phenomena even in achiral but inversion-breaking materials.
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