Achiral dendrimers

Overall, studies on poly(benzyl ether) dendrimers with various chiral core units show that the influence of the achiral dendrimer scaffold on the chiropti-cal properties of the core unit depend primarily upon the origin of their chirality. 

Studies performed on chiral core dendrimers have provided valuable information about the influence of the achiral dendrimer scaffold on the chiroptical properties of the core unit. Yet they also show that prediction of the chiroptical properties of the dendrimer is difficult, since the chiral relationship between the local chirality of the core unit and the nanoscopic conformation of the overall dendrimer structure is influenced by numerous structural factors. Further studies will be required to attain a fuller understanding of how an individual chiral building block can induce chirality in the entire dendrimer architecture (see Section 4.2.7). 

Brunner s concept (dendrizyme) of attaching dendrihc chiral wedges to a catalytically achve achiral metal complex represents the first example of asymmetric catalysis using a core-funchonalized dendrimer catalyst [21]. In view of the extremely poor asymmetric induction effected by the chiral dendritic shucture, the bulk of the attenhon has been focused on the immobilizahon of the well-established chiral hgands and/or their metal complexes into an achiral dendrimer core. The important early examples included TADDOL-centered chiral dendrimers, which were reported by Seebach et al. in 1999 [28]. In this section, we ahempt to summarize the recently reported chiral core-funchonalized dendrimers with special emphasis on their applications in asymmetric synthesis. 

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