Other notable applications of water-soluble dendrimers

12 Other notable applications of water-soluble dendrimers 

An interesting and novel potential use of dendrimers has been described by Menzel and co-workers who have developed photoluminescent dendrimers for fingerprint detection [101]. Amine terminated PAMAM dendrimer nanocomposites with cadmium sulfide were synthesised by the addition of methanolic solutions of cadmium nitrate and sodium sulfide to a methanolic solution of the dendrimer. Amine terminated dendrimers were selected so that they could form amide bonds with the carboxylic acids abundant in fingerprint residues. When bound to the fingerprint residues, the dendrimer composites serve as photoluminescent markers that aid detection. 

Another interesting application of water-soluble dendrimers has been described by Stoddart and co-workers and utilises ferrocene containing carbohydrate dendrimers [102]. A ferrocene core substituted with glucopyranosyl residues was found to form complexes with 3-cyclodextrin and has formed the basis for a supramolecular switch. 

Tomalia, D.A., Dewald, J.R., Hall, M.R., Martin, S.J. and Smith, P.B. (1985) Preprints of the 1st SPSJ International Polymer Conference, Society of Polymer Science Japan, Kyoto, 65. 

Fr chet, J.M.J., Jiang, Y., Hawker, C.J. and Philippides, A.E. (1989) Proc. lUPAC Int. Symp. Molecular Design of Functional Polymers. 

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