PAMAM complexes rhodium dendritic catalysts

A water-soluble hydroformylation catalyst was developed by Xi and co-workers [65]. Third generation PAMAM dendritic ligands, with hydrophilic amine or sulfonic acid end groups, were phosphonated and the rhodium complexes thus formed were found to catalyse efficiently the hydroformylation of 1-octene and styrene, under very mild conditions. Water-soluble dendritic cobalt phthalocyanines that exhibited catalytic activities and oxidised thiols in the presence of oxygen, have been synthesised by Kimura and co-workers [66]. The catalytic activity of the phthalocyanines was influenced by a egation of the catalytic sites that results fi om strong intermolecular cohesive forces. It was proposed that steric isolation, enforced by the addition of a bulky dendritic coaf around the active phthalocyanine unit, could improve the catalytic activity. Acid terminated polyamide dendrimers were coupled to a phthalocyanine core to produce the desired water-soluble cobalt phthalocyanines, which were tested subsequently for catalytic activity and stability. The results obtained showed that the aggregation of phthalocyanines was reduced the catalytic activity was improved and the stability of the catalyst was improved by addition of the dendritic substituents. 

PAMAM itself was used as a multivalent macromolecular ligand, probably due to its multiple amino groups, in order to complex and immobilize metal ions, complexes, and nanoparticles with catalytic capabilities. Thus, Kawi and coworkers used PAMAM-on-silica and PAMAM-on-alumina templates to immobilize Rh(l) complexes as hydroformy-lation catalysts. Passivation of the silica OH sites outside the pores of SBA-15 silica resulted in a tighter binding of rhodium complexes inside the pores and led to a series of catalysts that displayed a positive dendritic effect up to the second PAMAM generation." Sreekumar and Krishnan used PAMAM on polystyrene to complex Mn(ll) precursors and catalyze the oxidation of secondary alcohols." " ... 

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