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Author(s) |
Kumbhakar, M.; Manna, A.; Sayed, M.; Kumar, A.; Pal, H. (RPCD)
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Source |
Journal of Physical Chemistry-B, 2014. Vol. 118 (36): pp. 10704-10715 |
ABSTRACT
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The
general observation of Marcus inverted region (MIR) for bimolecular
electron-transfer (ET) reactions in different viscous media, e.g.,
micelles, reverse micelles, vesicles, ionic liquids, DNA scaffold, etc.
has been doubted in some recent publications arguing limitations in
Stern –Volmer (SV) analysis to account for the static and transient
stages of quenching in these slow diffusing media. Thus, following a
theoretical treatment based on a spherically symmetric diffusion
equation coupled with conventional Marcus ET description, it has been
suggested that the MIR observed in viscous media arises due to the
inadequate consideration of different quenching regimes and also due to
the differential excited-state lifetimes of the fluorophores used than a
genuine one (J. Am. Chem. Soc.2012,134,11396).
However, the overall treatment in this study is severely compromised by
setting the minimum solvent reorganization energy (λs)
to∼ 0.96 eV while fitting the experimental data, which unambiguously
suggests that the inversion in ET rate will never appear in the
exergonicity (−ΔG0) range of 0.16 to 0.71 eV, as is
the case for the studied ET systems. Besides, the applicability of the
conventional Marcus ET model (instead of Sumi−Marcus two-dimensional ET
model) in such extremely viscous media with exceptionally slow solvent
response is highly debatable and perhaps is the main cause of the
failure in fitting the experimental data quite satisfactorily. In the
present study involving ultrafast ET quenching for coumarin derivatives
by dimethylaniline donor in viscous ionic liquid media, we demonstrate
clear MIR for the intrinsic ET rates, directly obtained from the
ultrafast decay components of 1 −10 ps, a time scale in which diffusion
of reactants is negligible and the ET rates are either faster than or,
at the most, competitive with the solvent reorganization. The appearance
of MIR at ΔG0∼−0.5 eV, significantly lower than expected from the λs
value, further substantiate the nonapplicability of conventional ET
description but certainly advocate for the applicability of the
Sumi−Marcus two-dimensional ET model in such media. Moreover, no obvious
correlation has experimentally been observed between the excited-state
lifetimes of the coumarin derivatives and the ET rates for a large
number of dyes used in the present study. On the basis of the present
results and drawing inferences from reported literatures in viscous
media, we conclude that not only is the appearance of MIR very genuine
but also the mechanistic model necessary to account the observed facts
for the bimolecular ET reactions in a viscous medium is the
two-dimensional ET description, which deals with an extremely slow
relaxing solvent coordinate and a fast relaxing intramolecular
coordinate to describe the ET reactions. |
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