PAMAMOS: The first commercial silicon-containing dendrimers and their applications

Petar R. Dvornic, Michigan Molecular Institute

Abstract

The world of dendrimers presently encompasses several thousands of publications, including scientific papers and patents, several hundreds of different compositions, but only a few commercially available families of products (i.e. polyamidoamines (PAMAMs), until recently polypropyleneimines, and phosphorus-containing dendrimers) This is the story of PAMAMOS, which recently became the first commercially available silicon-containing dendrimers, and how we journeyed from our initial idea to the point of their commercialization. It focuses on three unique features of these new dendrimers: their ability to form precisely defined nano-structured, honeycomb-like, 2D or 3D networks; the amazing usefulness of these networks for the preparation of a variety of nanocomplexes and nancomposites; and some of the new vistas that these materials open up for engineering nanotechnology applications. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.