Experimental investigation of donor-acceptor electron transfer and back transfer in solid solutions

Electron transfer from an optically excited donor (rubrene) to randomly distributed acceptors (duroquinone) followed by electron back transfer in a rigid solution (sucrose octaacetate) has been studied experimentally. The forward electron-transfer process was observed by time-dependent fluorescence quenching measurements, while the electron back transfer from the radical anion to the radical cation was monitored by use of the picosecond transient grating technique. A statistical mechanics theory is used to describe the time-dependent dynamics of the system and to extract the forward- and back-transfer parameters from the data. The theory includes donor-acceptor and acceptor-acceptor excluded volume. It is found that the inclusion of excluded volume is necessary to obtain accurate transfer parameters. These parameters enable a detailed description of the electron transfer and recombination dynamics to be given. The agreement between theory and experiment is excellent. A variety of time-dependent properties of the system are calculated. These include the time-dependent ion populations and the probability that the ith acceptor is an ion as a function of time and distance. In addition, (R(t)) and ({tau}(t)), which are the average ion separation as a function of time and the average ion existence time as a function of ion separation, respectively, are calculated.