Donor-acceptor subunits strength

This water-gated mechanism is consistent with the strength of the charge-dipole interactions expected between the electron donor (acceptor), and the water dipoles in the cavity, as well as with the large amount of biochemical data available to date. It is also strongly supported by molecular dynamics simulations , which showed a remarkably consistent behaviour of water molecules in the cavity in response to the redox states of haem a and the binuclear site. Finally, this mechanism provides a satisfactory explanation of the unique structural arrangement of the redox-active centres in subunit I of all haem-copper oxidases. 

In this work we explore the effect of varying the electron rich nature, and thus the donor strength, of a set of four monomer subunits. In this family we use EDOT and thiophene as the donor variants and cyanovinylene as the acceptor to prepare a family of polymers which have band gaps ranging from 1.1 to 1.6 eV. 

---