Interactions gold/phosphorus dendrimers. Versatile ways to hybrid organic-metallic macromolecules

International audienceNanotechnology has the high capability to revolutionize many other technologies in many fields, due to the development of myriad nanodevices. Thus nanoparticles have been extensively studied over the last decade. Among all these, dendrimers pertain to the “nano-world” by virtue of their size (a few nanometers range). However, they are intrinsically different from classical ‘hard’ metallic nanoparticles because they are constituted exclusively of ‘soft’ organic matter (organic polymers). Their nanometric size effects can be observed and are reminiscent to those of the multivalent systems widely known in Nature. In this review we will report ways of incorporation of Au(I) or Au(III) selectively at the level of the core, within the cascade structure, regioselectively at a given generation, or on the outer shell of various phosphorus dendrimers. This can be achieved via the skeleton modification of these phosphorus dendrimers as well as with the selective incorporation of ligands as phosphine, thiol, iminophosphorane, thiophosphine, iminopyridine groups allowing complexation via formation of P–Au, S–Au, P=N–P=S–Au, or N–Au–N bonds. Original phosphorus dendritic structures as macromolecular asterisks, or onion peel dendritic structures allow to diversify the ways of obtaining either gold complexes or gold nanoparticles, some of them being used as chemical sensors. Finally, selected examples of applications of these gold nano-objects in nanomedicine for neuron activation or unprecedented anti-tumoral properties will be presented