Mass spectrometry as a tool in dendrimer chemistry: from self‐assembling dendrimers to dendrimer gas‐phase host–guest chemistry

Abstract Mass spectrometry has played a significant role in dendrimer chemistry, because it serves as an excellent analytical means to determine the purity and analyze the nature of defects even for higher generations. However, a mass spectrometer can also be used as a laboratory to study isolated dendrimer molecules in the gas phase or their host–guest complexes. Since the properties of molecules under environment‐free conditions are often quite different from those in solution, their gas‐phase chemistry provides valuable new insight into properties which cannot easily be studied in solution. This article summarizes some of our work on characterizing self‐assembling metallo‐supramolecular dendrimers, on analyzing ionization artifacts, on the differentiation between several, sometimes even isomeric defects through tandem MS experiments, and finally on the analysis of a surprisingly clear dendritic effect occurring in the fragmentation of dendritic host–guest complexes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.