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Two series of hydrogen-bonded liquid-crystalline ferrocenes have been prepared by reacting ferrocene derivatives carrying a carboxylic acid function and two flexible alkyl chains (containing n = 8, 10, or 12 carbon atoms) with stilbazoles bearing a flexible alkyl chain (containing m = 6 or 10 carbon atoms). The first family of materials (m = 6; n = 8, 10, 12) gave rise to smectic A/C and/or cubic (Ia3̄d space group) phases, and the second series of complexes (m = 10; n = 8, 10, 12) displayed cubic phases (Ia3̄d space group). A subtle balance between the volume occupied by the central core and the flexible chains, as well as the surface between both parts, are responsible for the formation of the mesophases. Hydrogen bonding is an elegant alternative to covalent bonding for the design of ferrocene-containing liquid crystals.

We report on the hole transport characteristics, as measured by time of flight, of a family of symmetrically substituted dialkoxy poly($p$-phenylenevinylene) polymers with different side-chain length. As side-chain length is decreased, the magnitude of the hole mobility ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{h}$ increases while the field dependence of ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{h}$ becomes more positive and the temperature dependence of ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{h}$ becomes stronger. For the shortest side-chain derivative studied, ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{h}$ exceeds ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}\text{ }{\text{cm}}^{2}\text{ }{\text{V}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\text{ }{\text{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ at electric fields greater than ${10}^{5}\text{ }\text{V}\text{ }{\text{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$. The trend in magnitude of ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{h}$ with side-chain length is consistent with the expected increase in electronic wave-function overlap as interchain separation decreases, while the trends in electric-field and temperature dependences of ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{h}$ are consistent with increasing site energy disorder. We show that the electrostatic contribution to the site energy difference for pairs of oligomers follows the observed trend as a function of interchain separation, although the pairwise contribution is too small to explain the data quantitatively. Nonresonant Raman spectroscopy is used to characterize the microstructure of our films. We construct spatial maps of the Raman ratio ${I}_{1280}/{I}_{1581}$ and confirm an expected decrease in average film density with side-chain extension. The structural heterogeneity in the maps is analyzed but no clear correlation is observed with transport properties, suggesting that the structural variations relevant for charge transport occur on a length scale finer than the resolution of $\ensuremath{\sim}1\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\text{m}$.