Advances in Dendritic Macromolecules

Book excerpt: The series Advances in Dendritic Macromolecules aims to cover the synthesis and supramolecular chemistry of dendritic or cascade super-molecules as well as their less perfect hyperbranched cousins.This volume demonstrates the novel and varied growth in this topic and certainly pushes the supramolecular concepts of Lehn into the budding "supramacro-molecular" frontier. In Chapter 1, Villavicenio and McGrath present their pivotal work in the creation of azobenzene-containing dendrimers; their Chapter describes the fundamental underpinnings to this interesting family. As they state in their summation, "A continuing combination of fundamental studies on the photomodulation of dendrimer properties in azobenzene-containing dendrimers and the new developments in the application of these materials to new and existing technologies is anticipated." The field of linear - dendritic block copolymers is summarized inChapter 2 from the eyes of Ivan Gitsov, who along with Professor Fréchet were the initiators of this variety of macromolecules.In Chapter 3, Astruc and colleagues present the recent advances in metallodendrimers, which incorporate ferrocenyl and/or other transition metal sandwich components; their Chapter capitalizes on the importance of supramolecular chemistry in these dendritic constructs.Finally, in Chapter 4, Wiener and Narayanan describe the practical applications of dendrimers to the area of magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents. Each of these unique chapters covers a different perspective of this versatile group of macromolecules.