  A recently proposed ab initio Hartree-Fock approach aimed at directly
obtaining the Wannier functions of a crystalline insulator is applied to
polymers. The systems considered are the LiH chain and trans-polyacetylene. In
addition to being the first application of our approach to one-dimensional
systems, this work also demonstrates its applicability to covalent systems.
Both minimal as well as extended basis sets were employed in the present study
and excellent agreement was obtained with the Bloch orbital based approaches.
Cohesive energies, optimized lattice parameters and the band structure are
presented. Localization characteristics of the Wannier functions are also
discussed.
