Diffusion-mediated geminate reactions under excluded volume interactions

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how crowding by inert particles affects geminate reaction kinetics, revealing that excluded volume interactions can slow or enhance reactions depending on initial conditions and particle distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive theoretical framework accounting for particle correlations and crowding effects on geminate reactions, including the influence of initial distributions.

Findings

Excluded volume interactions slow decay of survival probability at uniform inert particle distribution.

Reaction yield increases with positive density gradient of inert particles due to cage effect.

Results interpolate between low and high inert particle concentrations.

Abstract

In this paper, influence of crowding by inert particles on the geminate reaction kinetics is theoretically investigated. Time evolution equations for the survival probability of a geminate pair are derived from the master equation taking into account the correlation among all diffusing particles. The results interpolate between low and high concentrations of the inert particles. Excluded volume interactions by the inert particles hinder the diffusive motion of reactants. When the initial distribution of the inert particles is uniform, the excluded volume interactions slow the decay of the survival probability of a geminate pair in contrast to the acceleration of the decay found for the target problem under the presence of the excluded volume interactions among reactants. We also obtain the escape probability for a non-uniform initial distribution of the inert particles and show that reaction yield is increased when the reaction proceeds in the presence of a positive density gradient of the inert particles which inhibits the escape of reactants. The effect can be interpreted as a cage effect.