142 Advances in Polymer Science Editorial Board: A. Abe. A.-C ...

Dendrimers and Dendrimer-Polymer Hybrids 183
Fig. 2. Retrosynthetic analysis for the dendritic structures; FG, FP and X, Y are respectively
interconvertible functional groups; Path A is the divergent synthesis; Path B is the convergent
synthesis; l stands for the core structure; m stands for the branching repeat unit
Scheme 1
disconnection of (5), the problem is reduced in this case to the reaction of the
focal point synthon (6) and the branching monomer (3).
Path A, the divergent method, was introduced by Vögtle et al. [2] and extensively
applied by Tomalia and his coworkers at Dow [3]. Working on an inside-