Charge trapping by solitions—A possible transport mechanism in macromolecular systems

Macromolecules and their aggregates possess polar modes which, when excited, cause deformations, which provoke in turn elastic restoring forces. Even the simplest of such models (involving polarization and elastic modes along a chain) admit localized excitations (solitons) endowed with a characteristic degree of stability; and these provide a mechanism for charge trapping which may be of importance in the understanding of the elusively high efficiency of charge transfer over macroscopic distances evidently involved in various biomolecular processes.