The electronic structure of polydiacetylenes: cyclic versus linear models

The electronic structure of polydiacetylenes is investigated with SCF calculations as a function of backbone structure and chain length. The first dipole-allowed excitation (band gap) is red-shifted for the transformation from polydiacetylene (PDA) to polybutatriene (PBT) for cyclic chains The band gap for linear chains is blue-shifted for short chains, for linear chains containing 36 (or more) carbon atoms the band gap is red-shifted.