Synthetic routes to phenylene vinylene dendrimers

Dendrimers offer the opportunity to vary the electronic properties of an electroactive material without changing the processing procedure. Poly(1,4-phenylenevinylene) and its derivatives have been widely studied for use in light-emitting diodes. We have investigated two different iterative routes for the formation of phenylenevinylene based dendrimers to compare their properties with the linear counterparts. Our approach involves palladium-catalysed coupling of styryl derivatives to halo-benzenes which has enabled the rapid construction of a family of dendrimers