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

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. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.