Dr. Jack R. Pladziewicz, Chemistry Department, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, is supported by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division to investigate electron transfer processes. In this investigation rate constants will be measured for the single electron transfer reactions of a series of hydrazines and their radical cations. The data will then be used to evaluate the extent to which these reactions fit current theories for outer-sphere electron transfer. In particular the inner-shell reorganization energies for the alkyl hydrazine and the extent to which inner-shell reorganization contributes to the activation free energy for electron transfer reactions will be determined. By use of cross-reaction rate constants the self-exchange electron transfer will be estimated for hydrazines with slow exchange rates or with properties that make them otherwise unamenable to study. Many chemical reactions involve the transfer of electrons from one molecule to a second. One factor which influences the rate of these processes and which is not well understood is the reorganization which a molecule undergoes upon the transfer of an electron to or from it. This project is designed to determine the energies of these reorganizations for a series of nitrogen containing organic molecules and to assess how well current theories are able to account for the influence of the reorganization on the electron transfer rate.
