A chemical theory of topological insulators.

Research on topological insulators (TIs) has experienced an exponential growth in the last few years, promising new technological applications in fields ranging from electronics to quantum computing. However, the strong condensed matter physical background that is needed to understand the exotic electronic structure of TIs has precluded its dissemination into the chemistry community. In this work we use chemistry-like models (e.

Topological properties of a bipartite lattice of domain wall states.

We propose a generalization of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model of the bipartite lattice, consisting of a periodic array of domain walls. The low-energy description is governed by the superposition of localized states at each domain wall, forming an effective mono-atomic chain at a larger scale. When the domain walls are dimerized, topologically protected edge states can appear, just like in the original SSH model.