Theories of Photoinduced Electron Transfer

On the basis of the Franck-Condon principle, photoelectron transfer between a donor and acceptor molecule proceeds as follows (Fig. 10). Initially, the donor and acceptor are dispersed randomly in a solution. On light absorption, the donor (or acceptor) undergoes a rapid transition to form a Franck-Condon state, which rapidly undergoes nuclear relaxation to an equilibrated state. A further nuclear reorganization takes place before electron transfer. After electron transfer, there is nuclear relaxation to the final, equilibrated product state. 

Nuclear reorganization consists of changes in the internal or vibrational modes of the reactants as well as changes in the nuclear polarization of the surrounding solvent molecules. The distinction between these two classes of nuclear barriers is fundamental in understanding reactivity in photoelectron transfer. With this in mind, we shall now proceed to evaluate the barriers in electron transfer (Fig. 11). The classical theory, to be discussed in the next section, emphasizes the Coulombic and nuclear, whereas in the nonclassical, nonadiabatic theories, which are discussed in Sect. 3.3, emphasis is on electronic and nuclear barriers. 

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The theory of photoinduced electron transfer is based on the classical work of Marcus, Hush, Mulliken, Murrell and many others and it has been extensively reviewed in Chapter 1 of Part 1. The study of isolated, ultra-cold systems provides an opportunity to check some of the basic assumptions of these theories. In particular, one can easily discriminate between different structural isomers of a given system... 

Section 4.4) on the photoinitiation process, one can anticipate that under certain conditions (identical free radicals formed), the rules regulating the primary processes can also be applied for the secondary processes. The results presented in Figure 8 confirm this expectation. It is clear from the data (Figure 8) that the rate of polymerization as initiated by the series of cyanine borates in Table 2 increases as the driving force of the electron transfer increases. This behavior is predicted by the classical theory of photoinduced electron transfer. 

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