Distance dependence of intramolecular electron transfer through rigid hydrocarbon spacers

The effects of energy, distance and molecular structure on rates of electron transfer between molecules are the subjects of continuing investigations in the authors laboratory. The use of rigid molecular spacers between electron donor and acceptor groups facilitates study of the above questions, and is a promising method to obtain energy storage with directed charge separation. Here they present recent results focusing principally on the effects of distance through rigid hydrocarbon spacers. Through-bond interaction is the dominant source of the electronic coupling which enables electron transfer to occur in a series of molecules of the type D-S-A. Pulse radiolysis measurements used molecules D (donor) = biphenyl and A (acceptor) = naphthalene attached to a series of spacer molecules, S, having 3,4,6,7 or 10 saturated hydrocarbon bonds between the D and A groups. The spacer groups were 1,3-cyclohexane (three bonds), 1,4-cyclohexane (four bonds), 2,7-decalin (six bonds), 2,6-decalin (seven bonds) and 3,16-androstance (ten bonds). They attached electrons to these molecules using Argonne's picosecond Linac and measured electron transfer rates (ET) from 3.5 x 109s-1 across three bonds to 1.5 x 106s-1 across ten bonds. The clearest understanding of the rates is obtained by comparing the electronic-coupling interactions. The electronic interactions decrease regularly with increasing number of bonds, but do not correlate very well with either edge-to-edge or center-to-center distance