Electron transfer classical model

The interpretation of phenomenological electron-transfer kinetics in terms of fundamental models based on transition state theory [1,3-6,10] has been hindered by our primitive understanding of the interfacial structure and potential distribution across ITIES. The structure of ITIES was initially studied by electrochemical and thermodynamic analyses, and more recently by computer simulations and interfacial spectroscopy. Classical electrochemical analysis based on differential capacitance and surface tension measurements has been extensively discussed in the literature [11-18]. The picture that emerged from... 

Instead of the quantity given by Eq. (15), the quantity given by Eq. (10) was treated as the activation energy of the process in the earlier papers on the quantum mechanical theory of electron transfer reactions. This difference between the results of the quantum mechanical theory of radiationless transitions and those obtained by the methods of nonequilibrium thermodynamics has also been noted in Ref. 9. The results of the quantum mechanical theory were obtained in the harmonic oscillator model, and Eqs. (9) and (10) are valid only if the vibrations of the oscillators are classical and their frequencies are unchanged in the course of the electron transition (i.e., (o k = w[). It might seem that, in this case, the energy of the transition and the free energy of the transition are equal to each other. However, we have to remember that for the solvent, the oscillators are the effective ones and the parameters of the system Hamiltonian related to the dielectric properties of the medium depend on the temperature. Therefore, the problem of the relationship between the results obtained by the two methods mentioned above deserves to be discussed. 

In the (semi-)classical models of ETR (Marcus the Russian school), redox orbitals of reactants overlap at a close separation, followed by swift electron transfer. The activated complex, considered in equilibrium with the reactants, consists of these overlapping orbitals. In the tunneling model, the electron penetrates... 

A semi-classical treatment171-175 of the model depicted in Fig. 15, based on the Morse curve theory of thermal dissociative electron transfer described earlier, allows the prediction of the quantum yield as a function of the electronic matrix coupling element, H.54 The various states to be considered in the region where the zero-order potential energy curves cross each other are shown in the insert of Fig. 15. The treatment of the whole kinetics leads to the expression of the complete quenching fragmentation quantum yield, oc, given in equation (61)... 

The classical Morse curve model of intramolecular dissociative electron transfer, leading to equations (3.23) to (3.27), involves the following free energy surfaces for the reactant (Grx-) and product (Gr +x ) systems, respectively ... 

A recently proposed semiclassical model, in which an electronic transmission coefficient and a nuclear tunneling factor are introduced as corrections to the classical activated-complex expression, is described. The nuclear tunneling corrections are shown to be important only at low temperatures or when the electron transfer is very exothermic. By contrast, corrections for nonadiabaticity may be significant for most outer-sphere reactions of metal complexes. The rate constants for the Fe(H20)6 +-Fe(H20)6 +> Ru(NH3)62+-Ru(NH3)63+ and Ru(bpy)32+-Ru(bpy)33+ electron exchange reactions predicted by the semiclassical model are in very good agreement with the observed values. The implications of the model for optically-induced electron transfer in mixed-valence systems are noted. 

Figure 1. Potential energy plot of the reactants (precursor complex) and products (successor complex) as a function of nuclear configuration Eth is the barrier for the thermal electron transfer, Eop is the energy for the light-induced electron transfer, and 2HAB is equal to the splitting at the intersection of the surfaces, where HAB is the electronic coupling matrix element. Note that HAB << Eth in the classical model. The circles indicate the relative nuclear configurations of the two reactants of charges +2 and +5 in the precursor complex, optically excited precursor complex, activated complex, and successor complex.

In the classical activated-complex formalism nuclear tunneling effects are neglected. In addition, the electron transfer is assumed to be adiabatic. These assumptions are relaxed in the semiclassical model. 

Classically, the rate of electron transfer is determined by the rate of passage of the system over the barrier defined by the surfaces. In the semiclassical model (13) a nuclear tunneling factor that measures the increase in rate arising from... 

The value of log rn for the Fe(H20) 2+ - Fe(H20)6 + exchange (which features a relatively large inner-sphere barrier) is plotted as a function of 1/T in Figure 5. The nuclear tunneling factors are close to unity at room temperature but become very large at low temperatures. As a consequence of nuclear tunneling, the electron transfer rates at low temperatures will be much faster than those calculated from the classical model. 

One may wonder whether a purely harmonic model is always realistic in biological systems, since strongly unharmonic motions are expected at room temperature in proteins [30,31,32] and in the solvent. Marcus has demonstrated that it is possible to go beyond the harmonic approximation for the nuclear motions if the temperature is high enough so that they can be treated classically. More specifically, he has examined the situation in which the motions coupled to the electron transfer process include quantum modes, as well as classical modes which describe the reorientations of the medium dipoles. Marcus has shown that the rate expression is then identical to that obtained when these reorientations are represented by harmonic oscillators in the high temperature limit, provided that AU° is replaced by the free energy variation AG [33]. In practice, tractable expressions can be derived only in special cases, and we will summarize below the formulae that are more commonly used in the applications. 

Some authors have described the time evolution of the system by more general methods than time-dependent perturbation theory. For example, War-shel and co-workers have attempted to calculate the evolution of the function /(r, Q, t) defined by Eq. (3) by a semi-classical method [44, 96] the probability for the system to occupy state v]/, is obtained by considering the fluctuations of the energy gap between and 11, which are induced by the trajectories of all the atoms of the system. These trajectories are generated through molecular dynamics models based on classical equations of motion. This method was in particular applied to simulate the kinetics of the primary electron transfer process in the bacterial reaction center [97]. Mikkelsen and Ratner have recently proposed a very different approach to the electron transfer problem, in which the time evolution of the system is described by a time-dependent statistical density operator [98, 99]. 

Figure 11. The solid line depicts the quantum adiabatic free energy curve for the Fe /Fe electron transfer at the water/Pt(lll) interface (obtained by using the Anderson-Newns model, path integral quantum transition state theory, and the umbrella sampling of molecular dynamics. The dashed line shows the curve from the classical calculation as given in Fig. 5. (Reprinted from Ref 14.)...

In the early 1990s a few classical semimoleculai and molecular models of electron transfer reactions involving bond breaking appeared in the literature. A quantum mechanical treatment of a unified mr el of electrochemical electron and ion transfer reactions involving bond breaking was put forward by Schmickler using Anderson-Newns Hamiltonian formalism (see Section V.2). 

The calculation of the transmission coefficient for adiabatic electron transfer modeled by the classical Hamiltonian Hajis based on a similar procedure developed for simulations of general chemical reactions in solution. The basic idea is to start the dynamic trajectory from an equilibrium ensemble constrained to the transition state. By following each trajectory until its fate is determined (reactive or nonreactive), it is possible to determine k. A large number of trajectories are needed to sample the ensemble and to provide an accurate value of k. More details... 

Figure 22 shows the same quantities for the intramolecular electron-transfer Model IVb. Similar to what occurs in the pyrazine model, the classical level density obtained with y = 1 overestimates the total and state-specific level density while for y = 0 the classical level densities are too small. Employing a ZPE correction of y = 0.8 results in a very good agreement with the total quantum mechanical level density, while the criterion to reproduce the state-specific level density results in a ZPE correction of y = 0.6. 

The semiclassical mapping approach outlined above, as well as the equivalent formulation that is obtained by requantizing the classical electron-analog model of Meyer and Miller [112], has been successfully applied to various examples of nonadiabatic dynamics including bound-state dynamics of several spin-boson-type electron-transfer models with up to three vibrational modes [99, 100], a series of scattering-type test problems [112, 118, 120], a model for laser-driven... 

The Marcus treatment uses a classical statistical mechanical approach to calculate the activation energy required to surmount the barrier. It assumes a weakly adiabatic electron transfer process and non-equilibrium dielectric polarization of the solvent (continuum) as the source of activation. This model also considers the vibrational contributions of the inner solvation sphere. The Hush treatment considers ion-dipole and ligand field concepts in the treatment of inner coordination sphere contributions to the energy of activation [55, 56]. 

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