Perfluorocubane as a σ* orbital-based electron acceptor beyond classical electron-transfer models
Midori Akiyama, Keima Higashio, Hikaru Sotome, Kosaku Kato, Akira Yamakata, Shunsuke Yabu, Hirofumi Sato, Masahiro Higashi, Kenji Komaguchi, W. Ryan Osterloh, Hiroshi Imahori · 2026
Read Perfluorocubane as a σ* orbital-based electron acceptor beyond classical electron-transfer models by Midori Akiyama, Keima Higashio, Hikaru Sotome, Kosaku Kato, Akira Yamakata, Shunsuke Yabu, Hirofumi Sato, Masahiro Higashi, Kenji Komaguchi, W. Ryan Osterloh, Hiroshi Imahori (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13522515.txt.
Description
Akiyama and co-authors probe an electron acceptor built like a cube. Their 2026 paper studies perfluorocubane, a carbon cage ringed with fluorine whose empty orbital is made entirely of sigma-star orbitals rather than the pi-star systems of conventional acceptors. An accepted electron sits confined in the compact cage, almost like a point charge, promising electron-transfer behaviour outside established models.
The team built a molecule pairing perfluorocubane with an electron-donating fluorene unit and fired light pulses to trigger internal electron transfer. Picosecond spectroscopy in polar solvents directly showed charge separation and recombination. Fitting the kinetics to the standard semiclassical Marcus framework produced an unusual pairing: very large electronic coupling together with substantial reorganisation energy, a combination rarely seen in conjugated donor-acceptor systems. The authors credit the sigma-star orbital and cubic shape, and offer the molecule as a platform for unexplored electron-transfer regimes.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Midori Akiyama, Keima Higashio, Hikaru Sotome, Kosaku Kato, Akira Yamakata, Shunsuke Yabu, Hirofumi Sato, Masahiro Higashi, Kenji Komaguchi, W. Ryan Osterloh, Hiroshi Imahori |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 28 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |