Electron Transfer Through Macromolecular Systems

Abstract

Abstract Electron transfer between metal complexes which can be in intimate contact has been the subject of systematic study for about four decades. A major conclusion of the vast amount of work which has been done with intermolecular reactions of ordinary metal complexes is that the reactions are adiabatic, or nearly so (i.e., the only barriers to the reactions are the work of bringing the reagents into contact and the work of exciting them to the isoergic state, which is the configuration reached after the nuclei have readjusted so that the energy of the system is independent of the alternate sites the electron occupies). In adiabatic transfer, the rate of chemical change does not depend on the frequency of electron transfer between the two sites in the isoergic state. The measurement of the rate of electron transfer over large distances, especially when the intervening matter is made up of protein, has been a matter of great interest. At present, it is a very active field of investigation and several d...