Charge Redistribution and Spin Polarization Driven by Correlation Induced Electron Exchange in Chiral Molecules

Abstract: Chiral induced spin selectivity is a phenomenon that has been attributed to chirality, spin-orbit interactions, and non-equilibrium conditions, while the role of electron exchange and correlations have been investigated only marginally until very recently. However, as recent experiments show that chiral molecules acquire a finite spin-polarization merely by being in contact with a metallic surface, these results suggest that electron correlations play a more crucial role for the emergence of the phenomenon than previously thought. Here, it is demonstrated that molecular vibrations give rise to molecular charge redistribution and accompanied spin-polarization when coupling a chiral molecule to a non-magnetic metal. It is, moreover, shown that enantiomer separation, due to spin-polarization intimately related to the chirality, can be understood in terms of the proposed model.