Charge transfer free energy surfaces

Strong interactions are observed between the reacting solute and the medium in charge transfer reactions in polar solvents in such a case, the solvent effects cannot be reduced to a simple modification of the adiabatic potential controlling the reactions, since the solvent nuclear motions may become decisive in the vicinity of the saddle point of the free energy surface (FES) controlling the reaction. Also, an explicit treatment of the medium coordinates may be required to evaluate the rate constant preexponential factor. 

Fig. 1. The Marcus parabolic free energy surfaces corresponding to the reactant electronic state of the system (DA) and to the product electronic state of the system (D A ) cross (become resonant) at the transition state. The curves which cross are computed with zero electronic tunneling interaction and are known as the diabatic curves, and include the Born-Oppenheimer potential energy of the molecular system plus the environmental polarization free energy as a function of the reaction coordinate. Due to the finite electronic coupling between the reactant and charge separated states, a fraction k l of the molecular systems passing through the transition state region will cross over onto the product surface this electronically controlled fraction k l thus enters directly as a factor into the electron transfer rate constant...

Figure 8 Free energy surfaces for the precursor and successor states of intramolecular electron transfer in a model charge-transfer system. " On the plot the dashed fines indicate the Marcus theory, circles are simulations, and solid lines refer to the Q-model. The vertical dashed line marked Xq indicates the hoimdary of the energy gap fluctuation band predicted by the Q-model. (Reprinted with permission from Ref 54, 1989 American Chemical Society)...

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