Photo- and electro-active dendrimers: future trends and applications

The initial interest in dendrimer chemistry was the synthesis of such aesthetically pleasant macromolecules. Nowadays, the field is moving to applications in various multidisciplinary areas, such as medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering, i.e. at the interface of many disciplines. This short review describes some promising applications of photoactive and electroactive dendrimers as artificial enzymes, molecular batteries, sensors with signal amplification, photoswitchable hosts, systems for energy up-conversion, and light-harvesting antennas. The reported examples clearly show that these applications take advantage of the unique aspects of dendrimer structure: (i) three-dimensional array; (ii) generation-dependent size; (iii) presence of selected functional units in predetermined sites; and (iv) endo- and exo-receptor capabilities.