Chirality in dendritic architectures

At first glance the topic of chiral dendrimers seems to be a contradiction in terms. However, recent studies reveal that both the building blocks of the dendrimer and the overall dendritic architecture can be chiral and that chirality can be introduced at various levels. The expression of optical activity in these enantiomerically pure dendrimers as a result of conformational (dis)order has proven to be of special interest. In this Concepts article we present the different approaches to introducing chirality in dendritic architectures, organized through their possible impact in fields such as biocompatibility, catalysis, molecular recognition, and surface chemistry. Also, the relation between molecular chirality of core or building block and the macroscopic chirality of dendritic objects is discussed.