Synthetic Pathways Towards Phosphorus Dendrimers and Dendritic Architectures

The methods of synthesis of dendrimers and dendritic macromolecules possessing phosphorus derivatives at each branching points are reviewed. Classical methods using the repetition of two steps are first described, then various ways usable to shorten the time needed for the synthesis are emphasized. These improvements include the use of accelerated methods (one step for one generation), and of dendrons (dendritic wedges) to increase rapidly the number of generations. Beside classical dendrimers constituted by only one type of branches and one type of functional end groups, more sophisticated dendritic structures are described. In particular, up to 4 types of functional end groups can be grafted to each divergent point of the surface, or two types of functional groups can be located at the end of particular branches of special dendritic species. In the latter case, the dendritic species are obtained either by reacting functional groups included at particular layers of a main dendrimer, or taking advantage of the reactivity of the function located at the core of dendrons.