The discovery and development of self-assembling and self-organizable dendrons, dendrimers, and dendronized polymers

This account discusses the accidental discovery of self-assembling and self-organizable dendrons, dendrimers, and dendronized polymers. Our laboratory never intended to make this discovery. At the time of this finding, our laboratory was interested in developing a methodology to mimic the self-assembly of helical rod-like and icosahedral or spherical viruses. An attempt to transform a monotropic biaxial nematic (N b ) phase of a compound constructed from a combination of a half-disc and a rod into an enantiotropic phase by attaching this building block as a side group to a polymer led to a polymer coated with a helical dendritic jacket appearing as a primitive rod-like virus. Investigation of more and less complex variants of the half-disc and rod compound led to the discovery of self-organizable dendrons, dendrimers, and dendronized polymers assembling into both helical rod-like and spherical helices supramolecular dendrimers. The combination of a disc-like and a rod-like compound that never exhibits the N b phase was developed in France and published in this journal. Our discovery provided an example in which an incorrect assignment of a phase led to a finding that facilitated the development of several new unrelated research fields, all pioneered by self-assembling and self-organizable dendrons, dendrimers, and dendronized polymers. We would like to use this opportunity to thank the scientists who elucidated the structure and the mechanism of self-assembly of viruses, the laboratory that developed the combination of disc-like and rod-like molecules, and the scientists who asked us to investigate this molecule for providing the inspiration for this discovery.