Charge mobility in dendrimers

This post was stimulated by a talk at last weeks COPE meeting and looking at this 2001 Phys. Rev. B paper from the groups of Samuel and Burn.


In the attached rough notes I try to provide a framework to answer questions such as:

What determines the charge mobility in an array of these systems? How can it be maximised?

What is the relative importance of the conjugated and non-conjugated components of the dendrimer?

I take it the non-conjugated surface groups are required to make these systems soluble.
It seems that the mobility falls off exponentially fast with the length of the non-conjugated molecules at the surface. (roughly an order of magnitude for every carbon in the chain?)

Understanding the notes may be made easier by ready some of my earlier organic electronics posts, especially this one on Hush-Marcus electron transfer theory.