Title: polar driving force
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - polar driving force
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.16218
Status: current

Definition
The negative of the standard Gibbs energy change (i.e., \(-\Delta G^{\circ}\)) for outer-sphere electron transfer in polar solvents, where the electrostatic work terms in the expression used for the calculation of the Gibbs energy of photoinduced electron transfer are in general negligibly small.

Note
The work term might not be negligibly small even in polar solvents for large molecules undergoing a large change in dipole moment upon electron transfer.

Source
- PAC, 2007, 79, 293. 'Glossary of terms used in photochemistry, 3rd edition (IUPAC Recommendations 2006)' on page 401 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac200779030293)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/16218/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/16218/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/16218/xml

Citation: Citation: 'polar driving force' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.16218
License: The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms.
Collection: If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org .
Disclaimer: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using.
Accessed: 2026-05-10T16:58:06+00:00