A Born-Oppenheimer approach to adiabatic electrochemical charge transfer processes

An approach for the construction of the Hamiltonians and free energy surfaces for adiabatic electrochemical reactions accompanied by a considerable reorganization of the intramolecular structure is presented. For one-electron processes it reproduces the results of Koper and Voth (Chem. Phys. Lett. 282 (1998) 100) without an a priori introduction of a switching function transforming the bonding molecular potential into an antibonding one. The present approach is extended to two-electron processes, which are of importance for the dissociative adsorption and electrocatalysis.