Donor back electron transfer

Although the electrostatic potential on the surface of the polyelectrolyte effectively prevents the diffusional back electron transfer, it is unable to retard the very fast charge recombination of a geminate ion pair formed in the primary process within the photochemical cage. Compartmentalization of a photoactive chromophore in the microphase structure of the amphiphilic polyelectrolyte provides a separated donor-acceptor system, in which the charge recombination is effectively suppressed. Thus, with a compartmentalized system, it is possible to achieve efficient charge separation. 

With the site-selective hole injection and the hole trapping device established, the efficiency of the hole transport between the hole donor and acceptor, especially with respect to the distance and sequence dependence, were examined. Our experiments showed that hole transport between two guanines was extremely inefficient when the intervening sequence consisted of more than 5 A-T base pairs [1]. Hole injection into the DNA n-stack using photoexcited dCNBPU was accompanied by the formation of dCNBPU anion radical. Therefore, hole transport would always compete with the back electron transfer (BET). To minimize the effect of BET, we opted for hole transport between G triplets, that are still lower in oxidation potential than G doublet. With this experimental system, we researched the effect of the bridging sequence between two G triplets on the efficiency of hole transport [2]. 

Productive bimolecular reactions of the ion radicals in the contact ion pair can effectively compete with the back electron transfer if either the cation radical or the anion radical undergoes a rapid reaction with an additive that is present during electron-transfer activation. For example, the [D, A] complex of an arene donor with nitrosonium cation exists in the equilibrium with a low steady-state concentration of the radical pair, which persists indefinitely. However, the introduction of oxygen rapidly oxidizes even small amounts of nitric oxide to compete with back electron transfer and thus successfully effects aromatic nitration80 (Scheme 16). 

The counterpart to the photo-induced electron transfer is the corresponding thermal transformation of the electron donor-acceptor complex the barrier to such an adiabatic electron transfer is included in Fig. 18 as T, with the implicit understanding that solvation is an intrinsic part of the activation process (Fukuzumi and Kochi, 1983). When the rate of back electron transfer is diminished (e.g. by a reduced driving force), the dynamics for the contact ion pair must also include diffusive separation to solvent-separated ion pairs and to free D+- and A-- (Masnovi and Kochi, 1985a,b Yabe et al., 1991). 

All the surface recombination processes, including back reaction, can be incorporated in a heavy kinetic model [22]. The predicted, and experimentally observed, effect of the back reactions is the presence of a maximum in the donor disappearance rate as a function of its concentration [22], Surface passivation with fluoride also showed a marked effect on back electron transfer processes, suppressing them by the greater distance of reactive species from the surface. The suppression of back reaction has been verified experimentally in the degradation of phenol over an illuminated Ti02/F catalyst [27]. 

Electron transfer (Chapter 6), considered as a photophysical process, involves a photoexcited donor molecule interacting with a ground-state acceptor molecule. An ion pair is formed, which may undergo back electron transfer, resulting in quenching of the excited donor. 

Depending on the solvent polarity and redox potentials of a donor and an acceptor, the ions resulting from electron transfer may remain associated either as a contact IRP or as a solvent-separated IRP. In the contact pair, back electron transfer can take place. For such electron back-transfers, the solvent reorganization energy is less than 5% of the total reorganization energy (Serpa and Arnaut 2000). 

For instance, Kochi and co-workers [89,90] reported the photochemical coupling of various stilbenes and chloranil by specific charge-transfer activation of the precursor donor-acceptor complex (EDA) to form rrans-oxetanes selectively. The primary reaction intermediate is the singlet radical ion pair as revealed by time-resolved spectroscopy and thus establishing the electron-transfer pathway for this typical Paterno-Biichi reaction. This radical ion pair either collapses to a 1,4-biradical species or yields the original EDA complex after back-electron transfer. Because the alternative cycloaddition via specific activation of the carbonyl compound yields the same oxetane regioisomers in identical molar ratios, it can be concluded that a common electron-transfer mechanism is applicable (Scheme 53) [89,90]. 

Radical anions are produced in a number of ways from suitable reducing agents. Common methods of generation of radical anions using LFP involve photoinduced electron transfer (PET) by irradiation of donor-acceptor charge transfer complexes (equation 28) or by photoexcitation of a sensitizer substrate (S) in the presence of a suitable donor/acceptor partner (equations 29 and 30). Both techniques result in the formation of a cation radical/radical anion pair. Often the difficulty of overlapping absorption spectra of the cation radical and radical anion hinders detection of the radical anion by optical methods. Another complication in these methods is the efficient back electron transfer in the geminate cation radical/radical anion pair initially formed on ET, which often results in low yields of the free ions. In addition, direct irradiation of a substrate of interest often results in efficient photochemical processes from the excited state (S ) that compete with PET. 

The system is reversible in the absence of an added electron donor but undergoes irreversible reaction at the reduced rhenium bipyridine center in the presence of added triethylamine. The observation of reaction at the rhenium site upon excitation in the absorption band of the metalloporphyrin site is compatible with an ultrafast back electron transfer, provided that the triethylamine coordinated to the magnesium prior to absorption and that the electron transfer from the metalloporphyrin to the bipyridine was followed rapidly by irreversible electron transfer from the triethylamine to the metalloporphyrin. The experiments graphically demonstrated the benefits of the incorporation of carbonyl ligands at the electron acceptor as they allowed a tracking of the sequence of charge separation and back electron transfer via time-resolved IR data . ... 

---