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Cyclic and polyphosphazenes are extremely interesting and versatile substrates characterized by the presence of -P=N- repeating units. The chlorine atoms on the P atoms in the starting materials can be easily substituted with a variety of organic substituents, thus giving rise to a huge number of new materials for industrial applications. Their properties can be designed considering the number of repetitive units and the nature of the substituent groups, opening up to a number of peculiar properties, including the ability to give rise to supramolecular arrangements. We focused our attention on the extensive scientific literature concerning their biomedical applications: as antimicrobial agents in drug delivery, as immunoadjuvants in tissue engineering, in innovative anticancer therapies, and treatments for cardiovascular diseases. The promising perspectives for their biomedical use rise from the opportunity to combine the benefits of the inorganic backbone and the wide variety of organic side groups that can lead to the formation of nanoparticles, polymersomes, or scaffolds for cell proliferation. In this review, some aspects of the preparation of phosphazene-based systems and their characterization, together with some of the most relevant chemical strategies to obtain biomaterials, have been described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the possibility of functionalizing the surface of silicon-based materials by exploiting cyclophosphazenes containing suitable substituent groups. Thus, phosphazene trimers were prepared, containing about 50% of the reactive sites substituted by γ-aminopropyltriethoxy silane (APTES), while the residual positions in the cycle contain poly(ethylene glycol) monomethylether (MW approx. 750; PEG-750-ME), tetrafluoropropanol (TFP) and 4-hydroxyazobenzene (AzB). Using these novel materials we succeeded in surface functionalizing SiO2 beads in the coating of silicon wafers or sodalime slides and in the preparation of cyclophosphazene-based monoliths in the presence of hydrolyzed TEOS by sol–gel technique. The whole series of products has been characterized by standard spectroscopic (IR, UV-Vis, 1H-, 13C-, 29Si- and 31P-NMR, both in solution and in solid state) and thermal (DSC and DMTA) techniques. This approach to the surface functionalization of silicon-based materials containing carefully selected substituents is completely general and can be used to attach to the hydroxylated surfaces practically any type of nucleophile that can be supported on the cyclophosphazene ring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the synthesis, characterization, and reactivity of a novel oxazoline-containing cyclophosphazene, hexakis(4-oxazolinophenoxy)cyclophosphazene, C-6-OXA, are reported. This product was synthesized by a two-step procedure that required first the preparation of 2-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-2-oxazoline and then the successive treatment of this compound with hexachlorocyclophosphazene in the presence of NaH (60% oil dispersion). The resulting C-6-OXA was eventually reacted with low-molecular-weight organic molecules, e.g. 4-benzoylbenzoic acid, to form highly photosensitive cyclophosphazenes, and with high-molecular-weight polymers, e.g. poly(ethylene terephthalate), PET, acting as a new type of multifunctional, phosphazene-based chain extender, to produce branched PET macromolecules showing greatly modified rheological properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]