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Main Authors: Peake, Rebecca, Truyens, Zoé, Mol, Jan, Nielsen, Christian B, Beljonne, David, Cornil, David, Benton, Owen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08680
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author Peake, Rebecca
Truyens, Zoé
Mol, Jan
Nielsen, Christian B
Beljonne, David
Cornil, David
Benton, Owen
author_facet Peake, Rebecca
Truyens, Zoé
Mol, Jan
Nielsen, Christian B
Beljonne, David
Cornil, David
Benton, Owen
contents The tunability of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) opens opportunities to engineer topological electronic phases, including topological insulators (TIs) and higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs)--materials that host in-gap states localized at their edges, hinges, or corners. Here we explore how chemically feasible perturbations can drive triazine-based COFs (CTFs) into topological regimes. Using a tight-binding model on the Honeycomb lattice inspired by the frontier electronic states of CTFs, we show that introducing an effective uniaxial strain--implemented as a modulation of electron hopping on a subset of bonds--can generate a series of distinct topological band structures. This effect can be realized in practice through chemical substitution of linkers along the strained bonds. First-principles calculations demonstrate that replacing biphenyl with pyrene linkers drives a CTF to the brink of a HOTI phase, suggesting a viable route toward topological band-structure engineering in COFs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_08680
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Engineering Topological Bands in Strained Covalent Organic Frameworks
Peake, Rebecca
Truyens, Zoé
Mol, Jan
Nielsen, Christian B
Beljonne, David
Cornil, David
Benton, Owen
Materials Science
The tunability of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) opens opportunities to engineer topological electronic phases, including topological insulators (TIs) and higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs)--materials that host in-gap states localized at their edges, hinges, or corners. Here we explore how chemically feasible perturbations can drive triazine-based COFs (CTFs) into topological regimes. Using a tight-binding model on the Honeycomb lattice inspired by the frontier electronic states of CTFs, we show that introducing an effective uniaxial strain--implemented as a modulation of electron hopping on a subset of bonds--can generate a series of distinct topological band structures. This effect can be realized in practice through chemical substitution of linkers along the strained bonds. First-principles calculations demonstrate that replacing biphenyl with pyrene linkers drives a CTF to the brink of a HOTI phase, suggesting a viable route toward topological band-structure engineering in COFs.
title Engineering Topological Bands in Strained Covalent Organic Frameworks
topic Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08680