Photoinduced Electron Transfer and Geminate Recombination in Liquids

The coupled processes of intermolecular photoinduced forward electron transfer and geminate recombination between donors (rubrene) and acceptors (duroquinone) are studied in two molecular liquids: dibutyl phthalate and diethyl sebacate. Time-correlated single-photon counting and fluorescence yield measurements give information about the depletion of the donor excited state due to forward transfer, while pump-probe experiments give direct information about the radical survival kinetics. A straightforward procedure is presented for removing contributions from excited-state-excited-state absorption to the pump-probe data. The data are analyzed with a previously presented model that includes solvent structure and hydrodynamic effects in a detailed theory of through-solvent electron transfer. Models that neglect these effects are incapable of describing the data. When a detailed description of solvent effects is included in the theory, agreement with the experimental results is obtained. Forward electron transfer is well-described with a classical Marcus form of the rate equation, though the precise values of the rate parameters depend on the details of the solvents' radial distribution function. The additional experimental results presented here permit a more accurate determination of the forward transfer parameters than those presented previously. 1 The geminate recombination (back transfer) data are highly inverted and cannot be analyzed with a classical Marcus expression. Good fits are instead obtained with an exponential distance dependence model of the rate constant and also with a more detailed semiclassical treatment suggested by Jortner.2 Analysis of the pump-probe data, however, suggests that the geminate recombination cannot be described with a single solvent dielectric constant. Rather, a time-dependent dielectric constant is required to properly account for diffusion occurring in a time-varying Coulomb potential. A model using a longitudinal dielectric relaxation time is presented. Additionally, previously reported theoretical results 3 are rederived in a general form that permits important physical effects to be included more rigorously.