Ferrocene- and Fullerene[60]- Containing Liquid-Crystalline Materials

Abstract

This paper shows the versatility of ferrocene and fullerene for the design of thermotropic liquid-crystalline materials: i) the electrochemical properties of the ferrocene-ferrocenium system were exploited to design redox-active metallomesogens (1 and 2); ii) ferrocene-containing side-chain liquid-crystalline polysiloxane (3) and polymethacrylates (5 and 6) were synthesized by grafting a mesomorphic vinylferrocene monomer (4) onto commercially available polysiloxane and by free-radical polymerization of mesomorphic methacrylate-ferrocene monomers (7 and 8), respectively; iii) a first-generation ferrocene-containing liquid-crystalline dendrimer (9) was synthesized; and iv) liquid-crystalline fullerene (10) and mixed fullerene-ferrocene (11) derivatives were obtained by functionalizing the C₆₀ core with a twin cholesterol moiety.