Large Temperature Dependence of Large Kinetic Isotope Effects of Multistep Hydride Reduction of p-Chloranil by NADH Models in Acetonitrile: Proton Tunneling within Loose Radical Ion-Pairs

The temperature dependence of H/D kinetic isotope effects (KIEs) was determined for electron-transfer initiated multistep hydride-transfer reactions of NADH models in acetonitrile to investigate our hypothesis that more rigid systems exhibit smaller isotopic activation energy differences (ΔE(a) = E(aD) - E(aH)). Proton-tunneling occurs in close contact or partially solvent-separated radical ion-pair intermediates. Large KIEs and large ΔE(a)'s were observed, in contrast to the relatively small KIEs and ΔE(a)'s typically observed for one-step mechanisms where hydride-tunneling occurs within much tighter charge-transfer complexes. Results support the hypothesis.