Dynamical effects in electron transfer reactions

Abstract

A theoretical treatment is given for the effect of intramolecular vibrational and diffusive solvent orientational motions on the rate of electron transfer reactions. Four limiting cases are considered for the two‐electronic state problem: slow reaction, wide and narrow reaction window, and nondiffusing limits. With the aid of a decoupling approximation, an expression is derived for the reaction rate which reduces to the appropriate expression for each limiting case when the latter is approached. Under certain conditions the time dependence of the survival probability is multiexponential rather than single exponential. Because of this behavior two average survival times are defined and expressions for each are obtained. Experimental data are considered with the present treatment in mind. One feature of the present work is a more general analysis for the case that both vibrational and solvent diffusive motion contribute to the activation process. The relation to previous works in the literature is described.