Electron Transfer in Nanoparticle Dyads Assembled on a Colloidal Template

This work shows how to create covalently bound nanoparticle dyad assemblies on a colloidal template and studies photoinduced charge transfer in them. New results are reported for how the electron-transfer rate changes with the inter-nanoparticle distance and the energy band offset of the nanoparticles (reaction Gibbs energy). The experimental findings show that the distance dependence is consistent with an electron tunneling mechanism. The dependence of the rate on the energy band offset is found to be consistent with Marcus theory, as long as one performs a sum over final electronic states. These results indicate that our understanding of electron transfer in molecular donor-bridge-acceptor assemblies can be translated to describe nanoparticle-bridge-nanoparticle assemblies.