Photoinduced electron transfer experiment

Figure 4 Binuclear metal complexes used for photoinduced electron transfer experiments. ...

Most of the interest in mimicing aspects of photosynthesis has centered on a wide variety of model systems for electron transfer. Among the early studies were experiments involving photoinduced electron transfer in solution from chlorophyll a to p-benzoquinone (21, 22) which has been shown to occur via the excited triplet state of chlorophyll a. However, these solution studies are not very good models of the in vivo reaction center because the in vivo reaction occurs from the excited singlet state and the donor and acceptor are held at a fixed relationship to each other in the reaction-center protein. 

Radical cations can also be produced in solution by photoinduced electron transfer (PET) in polar solvents. Although this method is widely used to study the processes involved in the formation and decay of ion pairs224, free radical cations appear only as transients in such experiments. 

Photoinduced electron transfer (PET) is often responsible for fluorescence quenching. This process is involved in many organic photochemical reactions. It plays a major role in photosynthesis and in artificial systems for the conversion of solar energy based on photoinduced charge separation. Fluorescence quenching experiments provide a useful insight into the electron transfer processes occurring in these systems. 

The photochemical addition of some cyclic oligosilanes to Ceo has also been found interesting. Scheme 8.8 shows some examples of such a transformation. Irradiation (X > 300 nm) of a toluene solution of disilirane 36 with Ceo afforded the fullerene derivative 37 in a 82% yield [37]. The reaction mechanism is still unknown. When toluene is replaced by benzonitrile the bis-silylated product of the solvent was obtained in good yields. In these experiments a photoinduced electron transfer between 36 and Ceo is demonstrated, indicating the role of Ceo as sensitizer [38]. The photoinduced reactions of disilirane 36 with higher fullerenes such as C70, Cv8(C2v)and CuiDi) have also been reported... 

Nakamura and co-workers provided detailed mechanistic information for the photoinduced electron transfer from tri-1 -naphthyl phosphate and related compounds to 9,10-dicyanoanthracene yielding binaphthyls The intramolecular nature of the reaction could be established by using laser flash photolysis experiments as well as fluorescence measurements [17],... 

Trimethylsilyl triflate (McsSiOTf) acts as an even stronger Lewis acid than Sc(OTf)3 in the photoinduced electron-transfer reactions of AcrCO in dichloro-methane. In general, such enhancement of the redox reactivity of the Lewis acid complexes leads to the efficient C—C bond formation between organosilanes and aromatic carbonyl compounds via the Lewis-acid-catalyzed photoinduced electron transfer. Formation of the radical ion pair in photoinduced electron transfer from PhCHiSiMes to the (l-NA) -Mg(C104)2 complex (Scheme 11) and the AcrCO -Sc(OTf)3 complex (Scheme 12) was confirmed by the laser flash experiments [113]. 

Many spectroscopic methods have been employed for the investigation of such systems For example, wide-band, time-resolved, pulsed photoacoustic spectroscopy was employed to study the electron transfer reaction between a triplet magnesium porphyrin and various quinones in polar and nonpolar solvents. Likewise, ultrafast time-resolved anisotropy experiments with [5-(l,4-benzoquinonyl)-10,15,20-triphenylpor-phyrinato]magnesium 16 showed that the photoinduced electron transfer process involving the locally-excited MgP Q state is solvent-independent, while the thermal charge recombination reaction is solvent-dependent . Recently, several examples of quinone-phtha-locyanine systems have also been reported . 

Figure 5. An idealized mechanism of photoinduced electron transfer from CdS conduction band to methylviologen (MV +)( resulting in formation of methylviologen radical cation (MV,+). The colloidal CdS particle as represented, was generated at the inside surface of the DHP vesicle. Its exact location is based on fluorescence quenching experiments (Figure 5). Inserts oscilloscope trace showing the formation of MV by the absorbance change at 396 nm, after a laser pulse at 355 nm.

The fluorescence quenching experiments of aromatic hydrocarbons by tertiary amines, including /V,/V-dialkylanilincs, in less polar solvents show the typical exciplex emissions [382-384], but products are not obtained or inefficiently produced. On the other hand, in polar solvents such as acetonitrile or methanol, the photoinduced electron transfer from the amines to Aril efficiently occurs to give the addition products. Interestingly, some primary and secondary aliphatic and aromatic amines caused the photoinduced electron transfer even in nonpolar solvents. 

The first really successful experiments to generate the fullerene radical cation by photoinduced electron transfer were carried out by Foote and coworkers (Fig. 19) [167], They used singlet excited /V-methylacridinium hexafluorophosphate (MA+) as an electron acceptor which has a reduction potential of +2.31 V vs SCE, enough to oxidize C6o [Eq. (6)] [19]. 

Additional work by the Forster group, making use of transient emission spectroscopy, probed the rate of photoinduced electron transfer between metal centers within a novel trimeric complex [Os(II)(bpy)2(bpe)2 ] [Os(II) (bpy)2Cl]2 4+, where bpy is 2,2/-bipyridyl and bpe is fra s-l,2-bis-(4-pyridyl) ethylene. Transient emission experiments on the trimer, and on [Os(bpy)2(bpe)2]2+ in which the [Os(bpy)2Cl]+ quenching moieties are absent, reveal that the rate of photoinduced electron transfer (PET) across the bpe bridge is 1.3 0.1 x 108s-1. The electron transfer is believed to be from the peripheral Os(II)Cl metal centers to the [Os(bpy)2(bpe)2]2+ chro-mophore. Comparison to rate constants for reduction of monolayers at a Pt electrode reveals that the photoinduced process is significantly faster [39]. 

Tertiary amines have also been employed in electron transfer reactions with a variety of different acceptors, including enones, aromatic hydrocarbons, cyanoaro-matics, and stilbene derivatives. These reactions also provide convincing evidence for the intermediacy of aminoalkyl radicals. For example, the photoinduced electron transfer reactions of aromatic hydrocarbons, viz. naphthalene, with tertiary amines result in the reduction of the hydrocarbon as well as reductive coupling [183, 184]. Vinyl-dialkylamines can be envisaged as the complementary dehydrogenation products their formation was confirmed by CIDNP experiments [185]. 

Excitation of the complexes leads to photoinduced electron transfer from the excited ruthenium polypyridyl site to the viologen acceptor. The Ru2+ site is restored through electron transfer from the TEOA or back-electron transfer from the bipyridine, while the viologen is oxidized by the electrode, thus generating the photocurrent. As illustrated in Figure 5.51, this mechanism is supported by experiments in which the electron acceptor 4ZV (see Figure 5.50) reduced the... 

Primary steps of photoinduced electron transfer have been studied in plant reaction centers (PS-I and PS-II), by flash absorption and EPR. In PS-I two questions wereinvestigated i) the properties of the primary radical pair P-700+, A0 (kinetics of decay nature of A0, presumably a specialized chlorophyll a decay by recombination to populate the P-700 triplet state) and ii) the nature of the secondary acceptor A,. Extraction-reconstitution experiments indicate that A, is very probably a molecule of vitamin K,. 

Irradiation with visible light of pyrene and perylene anion radicals produced during a cyclic voltammetric experiment leads to an enhancement of the peak current and photoinduced electron transfer to chlorobenzene as acceptor has been shown to occur directly or via the dianion [179, 180]. 

All laser experiments point uniformly to an initial photoinduced electron transfer from the carbonylmetallate donor [M(CO) "] to the cationic acceptor A+ which results in the formation of a radical pair (Eq. 42). 

The majority of the research on the photochemistry of porphyrins linked to other moieties has been in the area of photoinduced electron transfer, and the systems studied are all in some sense mimics of the photosynthetic process described above. The simplest way to prepare a system in which porphyrin excited states can act as electron donors or acceptors is to mix a porphyrin with an electron acceptor or donor in a suitable solvent. Experiments of this type have been done for years, and a good deal about porphyrin photophysics and photochemistry has been learned from them. Although these systems are easy to construct, they have serious problems for the study of photoinduced electron transfer. In solution, donor-acceptor separation and relative orientation cannot be controlled. As indicated above, electron transfer is a sensitive function of these variables. In addition, because electron transfer requires electronic orbital overlap, the donor and acceptor must collide in order for transfer to occur. As this happens via diffusion, electron transfer rates and yields are often affected or controlled by diffusion. As mentioned above, porphyrin excited singlet states typically have lifetimes of a few nanoseconds. Therefore, efficient photoinduced electron transfer must occur on a time scale shorter that this. This is difficult or impossible to achieve via diffusion. Thus, photoinduced electron transfer between freely diffusing partners is confined mainly to electron transfer from excited triplet states, which have the required long lifetimes (on the micro to the millisecond time scale). 

The rate constant for photoinduced electron transfer k4 and the charge recombination rate constant ks are directly observed experimentally. The reciprocal of the 3-ps time constant detected in the transient absorption experiments, equals kn, 3 X 10 s. This assignment is verified by the results for a model P-C6o dyad, where the same value was obtained for the rate constant for photoinduced electron transfer. The charge recombination of (Pzp)3-Pzc-P -C6o is associated with the 1330-ps decay component observed in transient absorption, as demonstrated by the spectral signature of the fullerene radical anion with absorption in the 1000-nm region. This lifetime is within a factor of 2.5 of the lifetime observed for the P" -C6o in a model dyad (480 ps). 

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