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Updated: Feb 22, 2026

Non-equilibrium Microwave Plasma for Efficient High Temperature Chemistry
Published on: August 1, 2017
Electron-transfer-induced and phononic heat transport in molecular environments
Renai Chen1, Galen T Craven1, Abraham Nitzan1
1Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Abstract:
A unified theory of heat transport in environments that sustain intersite phononic coupling and electron hopping is developed. The heat currents generated by both phononic transport and electron transfer between sites characterized by different local temperatures are calculated and compared. Using typical molecular parameters we find that the electron-transfer-induced heat current can be comparable to that of the standard phononic transport for donor-acceptor pairs with efficient bidirectional electron transfer rates (relatively small intersite distance and favorable free-energy difference). In most other situations, phononic transport is the dominant heat transfer mechanism.
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