INFLUENCE OF MEDIUM DYNAMICS ON SOLVATION AND CHARGE SEPARATION REACTIONS - COMPARISON OF A SIMPLE ALCOHOL AND A PROTEIN SOLVENT

Dielectric relaxation in apomyoglobin and in 1-octanol are studied by using time-resolved Stokes shift measurements of the chromophore anilino-2-aminonaphthalene-6-dimethylsulfonamide. We find that the protein dielectric function can be represented by a Debye form with longitudinal time scale τL = 9.2 ns. The octanol measurements are consistent with the dielectric continuum model. The implications of these results on predicting the rates of adiabatic electron-transfer processes are discussed. © 1990 American Chemical Society.