Franck-Condon barrier

The first study, by Ismail et al. [153], used the CASSCF method with a 6-31G basis set and an active space of 14 electrons in 10 orbitals to locate conical intersections and pathways connecting them to the Franck Condon region. Two such conical intersections were identified in that work, the ci2 and ci3, as defined above. In that work the barrier leading to ci2 was calculated to be 10 kcal/mol, too high to make this conical intersection relevant. But the barrier leading to ci3 was found to be much smaller, 3.6 kcal/mol, and it was concluded that ci3 is involved in the dominant decay path. Reaching this intersection requires first a conical intersection between the nn state, which is vertically the Si state, and the non state, which is vertically the S2 state. Merchan and Serrano-Andres followed up this study [140] using a method... 

Figure 5 shows a collection of S j -S0 R2PI spectra near the origin. The weak bands at low frequency are pure torsional transitions. We can extract the barrier height and the absolute phase of the torsional potential in S, from the frequencies and intensities of these bands. The bands labeled m7, wIq+, and are forbidden in the sense that they do not preserve torsional symmetry. In the usual approximation that the electronic transition dipole moment is independent of torsion-vibrational coordinates, band intensities are proportional to an electronic factor times a torsion-vibrational overlap factor (Franck-Condon factor). These forbidden bands have Franck-Condon factors m m") 2 that are zero by symmetry. Nevertheless, they are easily observed in jet-cooled spectra. They are comparably intense in many spectra, about 1-5% of the intensity of the allowed origin band. 

Note that the lability principle is formulated first of all for transferable electrons and atoms. An increase in their lability leads as a rule to an increase in the overlapping of the wave functions. For atoms the latter means a decrease in the Franck-Condon barrier. 

The height of the potential barrier separating the initial and final states of the nuclear subsystem decreases and, hence, the Franck-Condon factor increases (Fig. 6). In the classical limit, this results in a decrease of the activation free energy. 

R to P is slow, even when the isoenergetic conditions in the solvent allow the ET via the Franck-Condon principle. The TST rate for this case contains in its prefactor an electronic transmission coefficient Kd, which is proportional to the square of the small electronic coupling [28], But as first described by Zusman [32], if the solvation dynamics are sufficiently slow, the passage up to (and down from [33]) the nonadiabatic curve intersection can influence the rate. This has to do with solvent dynamics in the solvent wells (this is opposed to the barrier top description given above). We say no more about this here [8,11,32-36]. 

Absorption of a photon by an alkene produces a (tt,Jt ) vertical (Franck-Condon) excited state in which the geometry of the ground state from which it was formed is retained. Since the (it,it ) state has no net n bonding, there is little barrier to free rotation about the former double bond. Thus, relaxation takes place rapidly, giving a nonvertical (it,it ) state with a lower energy and different geometry to the vertical excited state. 

Electron transfer reactions, treated by continuum theory, suggested that the Franck-Condon barrier (the barrier for the vertical transition of electrons), which is about four times the activation barrier for the isotopic electron transfer in solution, is due to Bom continuum solvation processes. Specific contributions for the activation of ions come from the solvent continuum far from the ion the important contribution from the solvent molecules oriented toward the central ion in the first and second solvation shells is neglected. ... 

Figure 8-1 shows the potential energy barrier for the transfer reaction of redox electrons across the interface of metal electrode. On the side of metal electrode, an allowed electron energy band is occupied by electrons up to the Fermi level and vacant for electrons above the Fermi level. On the side of hydrated redox particles, the reductant particle RED is occupied by electrons in its highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the oxidant particle OX, is vacant for electrons in its lowest imoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO). As is described in Sec. 2.10, the highest occupied electron level (HOMO) of reductants and the lowest unoccupied electron level (LUMO) of oxidants are formed by the Franck-Condon level sphtting of the same frontier oihital of the redox particles... 

Density of states weighted Franck-Condon factor Deoxyribonucleic acid Barrier height for the adiabatic hole motion Difference in ionization potentials of adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine base pairs... 

The temperature sensitivity arises due to disposition of T2 state with respect to S, state. If T2 is considerably above S, transfer to T, is less probable because of unfavourable Franck-Condon factor. As a consequence, fluorescence is the easiest way for deactivation and fluorescence yield is nearly unity. No dependence on temperature is expected. On the other hand, if T2 is sufficiently below S so that the density of state is high at the crossing point, fluorescence quantum yield should be less than unity as triplet transfer is fecilitated. Again no temperature dependence is observed. But if T2 is nearly at the same energy as S, a barrier to inter-system crossing is expected and fluorescence yield will show temperature dependence. 

A small or nonexisting barrier E0other hand, implies that the initial conditions (Franck-Condon geometry, and so on) can influence the reaction rate. A consequence of the resulting nonstationary probability distribution functions are time-dependent reaction rates (see Section IV). 

Fig. 2.9. Empirical energy diagram for DMABN in n-butyl chloride (energetics based on room-temperature fluorescence band maxima and on activation energies). In the small-barrier case, E. is to be viewed as a dynamical activation energy resulting from solvent viscosity. The Franck-Condon ground state (after emission from A ) is anomalously destabilized (large E3).

---