ABSTRACT
Proton transfer is an important class of electrochemical reactions and the development of quantum mechanical theory of electrode processes has been to a great extent stimulated by the need for a description of the physical mechanism of the first step of this reaction, that is the discharge of hydrogen ions H3O. The solvent in fact was considered as a thermal bath weakly interacting with the reactants which provided a thermal equilibrium in the reaction complex. The first model, taking into account strong dynamic interaction of the solvent with the reaction complex and quantum character of the proton vibrations in the donor molecule and adsorbed state on the electrode, was suggested by Dogonadze, Kuznetsov and Levich. The Born–Oppenheimer approximation is used for separation of the polarization vibrations and the proton vibrations. The physical mechanism of electrochemical desorption of hydrogen atoms in general is similar to that for the discharge step of proton donors.
