Bridge Hopping on Conducting Polymers in Solution

Configurational fluctuations of conducting polymers in solution can bring into proximity monomers which are distant from each other along the backbone. Electrons can hop between these monomers across the "bridges" so formed. We show how this can lead to (i) a collapse transition for metallic polymers, and (ii) to the observed dramatic efficiency of acceptor molecules for quenching fluorescence in semiconducting polymers.