Hello ! I am currently interested in organic radicals and I asked myself few questions in the field of electrochemistry for these kind of molecules.
I am not an expert in electrochemistry but I used to study several dyes by cyclic voltametry, especially to determine the HOMO and LUMO level related to oxidation and reduction peaks and to check the electrochemical stability.
However, I was wondering what would be the meaning of these peaks for a stable radical in CV. One orbital is semi-full (SOMO) so I would expect to have the reduction and oxidation peaks really close due to the removal of an electron in the SOMO (for the oxidation) and the addition of an electron in the SOMO (reduction) and the traditional «HOMO / LUMO» peaks at higher / lower potential. However I've seen few publications showing two distinct oxidation / reduction peak by CV far from each other and related them with HOMO LUMO level (not SOMO).
Could you enlightened me about this ?
Thanks a lot