Electron transfer rate distance dependence

In the treatments discussed above, the reactant was assumed to be held at a fixed, short distance, xq, from the electrode. It is also of interest to consider whether a solution species can undergo electron transfer at different distances from the electrode and how the electron-transfer rate might depend on distance and on the nature of the intervening medium. The act of electron transfer is usually considered as tunneling of the electron between states in the electrode and those on the reactant. Electron tunneling typically follows an expression of the form ... 

Further improvements can be achieved by replacing the oxygen with a non-physiological (synthetic) electron acceptor, which is able to shuttle electrons from the flavin redox center of the enzyme to the surface of the working electrode. Glucose oxidase (and other oxidoreductase enzymes) do not directly transfer electrons to conventional electrodes because their redox center is surroimded by a thick protein layer. This insulating shell introduces a spatial separation of the electron donor-acceptor pair, and hence an intrinsic barrier to direct electron transfer, in accordance with the distance dependence of the electron transfer rate (11) ... 

Fig. 3 Distance dependence of the relative electron transfer rate from a single guanine to the enol ether radical cation... 

The distance dependence of the electron-transfer rate can also be demonstrated for the non-benzenoid systems [14] and [15], which... 

As described above, the arrangement of the various functional moieties was controlled spatially across the films at molecular dimensions in the form of LB films. In a series of folded type of sensitizer (S) and electron-donor (D) dyads in a previous work, however, the dyad molecules in the LB films can take many conformations due to flexibility of the longer alkyl chain of the dyads so that clear dependence of the photoinduced electron transfer rate on the alkyl chain length, i.e. S-D distance, was not observed [2], By this reason, we are studying the chain length dependence by using a series of linear type S-D dyads, in which the S and D moieties were linked by a single alkyl chain. In the closely packed LB films, the alkyl chain was considered to be extended and the distance between S and D to be... 

Four Aspects of the Distance Dependence of Electron-Transfer Rates... 

The photoinduced electron-transfer dynamics has also been examined for a series of porphyrin-fullerene-linked molecules with the same spacer employed for Fc-ZnP-H2P-C6o ZnP-Ceo (edge-to-edge distance Ree = 11-9 A), Fc-ZnP-Ceo (Ree = 30.3 A) and ZnP-H2P-Ceo (Ree = 30.3 A), shown in Chart 1 [53]. The driving force dependence of the electron-transfer rate constants ( et) of these dyad, triads, and tetrad molecules is shown in Fig. 3, where log et is plotted against the driving force (-AGet) [47]. 

The dependence of electron transfer rate constants on distance has been described by Equation 3 ... 

Fig.6 The distance dependence of electron-transfer rates in DNA hairpins [51]. The acceptor is a photoexcited derivatized stilbene (SA) or phenanthrene (PA) the electron donor is guanine (G), deazaguanine (Z), or inosine (I). The decay is much more rapid in the Z-PA couple compared to the G-SA couple because the tunneling energy is further from the bridge states in the case of Z-PA...

Cai et al. [7e] investigated electron and hole transfer in various polynucleotide duplexes and compared them with previous results found for salmon sperm DNA, to examine the effect of base sequence on excess electron and hole transfer along the DNA 71-way at low temperature. Electron and hole transfer in DNA was found to be clearly base sequence dependent. In glassy aqueous systems (7M LiBr glasses at 77 K), excess electron-transfer rates increase in the order polydIdC-polydIdC<salmon testes DNAexcess electron and hole transfer rates increase in the order polyC-polyG<salmon testes DNATransfer distances at 1 min and distance decay constants for electron and hole transfer from base radicals to MX in polynucleotides-MX and DNA-MX at 77 K are derived and compiled in Table 3. This table clearly shows that the electron-transfer rate from donor sites decreases in... 

The expression for ket in equation (29) is still not a complete expression for the total electron transfer rate constant. Both the electronic coupling term V and A0 are dependent upon the interreactant separation distance r, and, therefore, so is ktt in equation (29). The dependence of /.0 on r is shown in equation (23) in the dielectric continuum limit. The magnitude of V depends upon the extent of donor-acceptor electronic orbital overlap (equation 17) and the electronic wave-functions fall off exponentially from the centers of the reactants. In order to make comparisons between ktt and experimental values of electron transfer rate constants, it is necessary to include the dependence of ktt on r as discussed in a later section. 

In principle, glucose oxidase could be oxidized directly at the electrode, which would be the ultimate electron acceptor. However, direct electron transfer between redox enzymes and electrodes is not possible because the FADH2/FAD redox centers are buried inside insulating protein chains (Heller, 1990). If it were not the case, various membrane redox enzymes with different standard potentials would equalize their potentials on contact, thus effectively shorting out the biological redox chains. The electron transfer rate is strongly dependent on the distance x between the electron donor and the electron acceptor. 

Photosynthetic model systems have recently been exhaustively reviewed elsewhere [5, 6, 218] and a number of results are given in the latest literature [219-224]. The attention of the researchers is focused on topics such as electron-transfer chain and energy dissipation within models (the first step is the transfer of an electron from a metallotetrapyrrole moiety yielding a cation radical) the dependences of the electron-transfer rate constant on the driving force of the process distance and mutual orientation of donor and acceptor sites influences of membranes and medium (solvent) properties, etc. 

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