Understanding of Hole and Excess-Electron Trapping and Detrapping by DNA

Project Collaborator:

The following hypotheses are being tested:

  1. Radical combination reactions, persisting hours after energy deposition at 4K, are propagated by tunneling.
  2. Thermally activated detrapping, of radicals stably trapped at 4K, is gated by reversible proton transfer.
  3. The activation energy for hole detrapping is substantially less than that for electron detrapping.
  4. The range of the electrons and holes is governed by a three dimensional walk, not a one-dimension walk as would be the case if electron/hole transfer is only between stacked bases.
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