Phosphorus Dendrimers: Efficient Tools for “Greener” Catalyst Design

Abstract

The use of dendrimers as soluble supports of catalytic entities offers efficient tools for “greener” catalysis. Indeed, thanks to their large size, dendrimers can be recovered and reused; depending on their structure, they can be tolerant to aqueous media or even soluble in water; and they can be used as ligands of cheap metals such as copper. We describe several examples of dendritic catalysts having such properties, based on the functionalization of phosphorus-containing dendrimers.

Keywords:

• Catalysis
• catalysis in water
• copper catalysts
• dendrimer
• reusable catalysts

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the ANR (H2OFerCat and GlobuCat) for financial support (in particular PhD grants to M.K. and L.T.), to the RTN AQUACHEM (in particular for a PhD grant to P.S.), and to the CNRS for financial support.