Facile Synthesis of Bifunctional Dendritic Block Copolymers

Significance

Dendrimers are attractive materials due to the dense functionality present at the branch termini. Synthesizing multifunctional dendrimers with directional control of the functional groups, however, remains a challenge. Hawker et al. have achieved this goal in a remarkably simple synthesis for a bifunctional dendrimer by utilizing the highly efficient and functional group-tolerant copper(I)-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction to link two dendrons. In one example, the amphiphilic dendritic block copolymer was further functionalized with α-d-mannopyranoside and 7-diethylaminocoumarin dyes using the cycloaddition reaction.