Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
The photosynthetic reaction centers of plants and bacteria are photovoltaic devices on the molecular scale which convert light energy into chemical potential energy in the form of long-lived, energetic charge separated states. It is now possible to prepare synthetic multicomponent molecules which mimic important aspects of this process. For example, one of the keys to reaction center function is a multistep electron transfer strategy. In this paper, two general types of multistep electron transfer, sequential and parallel, are described and illustrated with several synthetic triad and pentad molecules.