PAMAM dendron-poly block

Figure 5.30. Illustration of a poly(amidoamine-organosilicon) (PAMAMOS) dendrimer, with two generations of each PAMAM and organosihcon units. Although the PAMAMOS represents a block copolymer, an unhmited number of other variations that contain a random copolymer array, or varying dendron subunits, may also be synthesized. Reproduced with permission from Dvornic, P. R. Owen, M. J. Synthesis and Properties of Silicones and Silicone-Modified Materials, ACS Symposium Series 838,2002,236.

More recently, non-traditional polymerization strategies have evolved to produce a fourth new major polymer architecmral class, now referred to as dendritic polymers [43]. This new architectural polymer class consists of four major subsets (1) random hyperbranched, (2) dendrigrafts, (3) dendrons and (4) dendrimers. Dendrimers, the most extensively studied subset were discovered by the Tomalia group while in The Dow Chemical Company laboratories (1979) and represent the first example of synthetic, macromolecular dendritic architecture [43,44]. First use of the term dendrimer appeared in preprints for the first SPSJ International Polymer Conference, held in Kyoto, Japan in 1984 [45]. The following year, a full article in Polymer Journal [46] (Fig. 8) described the first preparation of a complete family of Tomalia-type poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers (G = 1-7) and their use as precise, fundamental building blocks to form poly (dendrimers) or so-called starburst polymers. These poly(dendrimers) are now referred to as megamers [47, 48] and are described in more detail later in Sect. 6.4.3. Other pioneers in the dendritic polymer field include Vogtle, Newkome, Frechet, Majoral, and others. These historical contributions have been reviewed recently [52]. ... 

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