Protein Photoconductors and Photodiodes

摘要

Long-range electron transfer (ET) through proteins plays important roles in living systems. ET proteins can be regarded as wide-band-gap molecular semiconductors with "dopants" (redox or photoactive species) that provide an electron- or hole-localizing site, though the protein scaffold has insulating character. Intramolecular ET in proteins has been investigated in detail by many groups to elucidate the factors that control the rates of these nonadiabatic reactions. Dutton and co-workers proposed a square barrier ET rate model, while Gray and colleagues showed that ET depends on the structure of the medium between an electron donor and acceptor.