A novel functionalized dendronized polyamide decorated with a lot of bromomethyl groups in the periphery has been reported by the macromonomer route.The resulting polyamide had both a polyamide backbone and polyamide dendrons.A new activating procedure of thionyl chloride as an activating agent was adopted to synthesize the dendrons

macromonomer and polyamide.This activating procedure eliminated the protection/deprotection procedure and reduced side reactions.The syntheses of the products adopted the method of the convergent synthesis which was carried out by a two-step method involving1the activation of carboxylic groups with thionyl chloride and [STHZ]2 condensation with an unprotected AB2 building block.The structures of the products were confirmed by Fourier transform infrared and NMR spectral analyses.The gel permeation chromatography analyses (GPC) of the resulting polyamide showed a typical weight-average molecular weight (Mw) of 5.01×10.4 versus polystyrene and a polydispersity of 2.74.The solubility of the resulting polyamide was improved remarkably because of the introduction of the dendritic fragments and the existence of the periphery functional groups.The resulting polyamide could easily dissolve in aprotic polar solvents such as N

N-dimethylformamide (DMF)

N

N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc)

dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO)

N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4).The inherent viscosity of the resulting polyamide was low because of the presence of the dendritic fragments

and it was 0.09 dL/g.The thermal properties were also studied by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)

and the result showed that the resulting polyamide had good thermal properties.Because of a lot of bromomethyl groups in the periphery

the resulting polyamide could be used as a initiator for atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) to synthesize “hairy” functional derivatives and could also be applied in many fields through converting bromomethyl groups into other desired groups such as amino and hydroxyl groups.