Electron transfer reactions linear response approximation

A second related issue is the asymmetry in the E-i response near Ecelectron transfer reaction that is different from the metal oxidation reaction. Therefore there is no fundamental reason why pa and pc should be equal, and they should be expected to differ. The extent of their difference defines the degree of asymmetry. Asymmetry matters because the extent of the region where Eq. (2) is a good approximation of Eq. (1) then differs for anodic and cathodic polarization (29). The errors in assuming 10 mV linearity using both the tangent to the E-i data at Econ and for +10 or -10 mV potentiostatic polarizations have been defined for different Tafel slopes (30). 

The approach used to obtain the EVB free-energy functionals (the Ag of Equation (7)) has been originally developed in Ref. 25 in order to provide the microscopic equivalent of the Marcus theory for electron transfer (ET) reactions.38 This approach allows one to explore the validity of the Marcus formula and the underlying linear response approximation (LRA) on a microscopic molecular level.39 While this point is now widely accepted by the ET community,40 the validity of the EVB as perhaps the most general tool in microscopic LFER studies is less appreciated. This issue will be addressed below. 

In any chemical reaction, the approaching molecular systems experiences both electron transfer (in some cases, spin polarization) and external potentials changes while the interacting system evolves towards the final state. Behind the perturbative approximation we are here concerned, and within the context of the [A( , Np, v (r), v (r)] representation of spin polarized DFT, the nonlocal descriptors are defined as first (and higher) order derivatives of the electron density of a given spin p (r) with respect to the spin external potentials Vo-(r). In particular, the symmetric linear response (or polarizability) kernels, defining the spin density... 

---