FUNCTIONAL DENDRITIC MACROMOLECULES - PREPARATION AND OPTICAL-PROPERTIES

Repetitive coupling reactions of branched azobenzene derivatives resul ted in dendritic macromolecules, or ''wedges'' and ''dendrimers''. The se molecules were designed to incorporate aliphatic and polar units in order to prepare Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films. Atomic force microscop y (AFM), absorption spectroscopy, and second harmonic generation (SHG) measurements revealed structural properties of the LB films in terms of size, aggregation, and orientation. AFM measurements revealed that growth of the branches increased as a function of the generation. In a bsorption spectroscopy and SHG measurements, results showed that wedge s had an unsymmetric orientation in the LB films, while dendrimers had a symmetrically functionalized structure.