Dendrimer-like porous silica nanoparticles, which have center-radial pore structures with gradually increasing pore sizes from particle interior to particle surface, are a kind of new porous material. Compared with conventional mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) with uniform hexagonal ordered mesopores, dendrimer-like nanoparticles have remarkable structure advantages due to their unique open three-dimensional dendritic superstructures, such as high pore permeability and high accessibility to internal surface, thus being in favor of mass (molecules and even nanoparticles) transfer process along center-radial pore channels, loading in the interior of dendritic nanoparticles or reacting with active sites in the particles. Therefore, they are very promising platforms to construct advanced adsorbents, nanocatalysts and drugs and gene nanocarriers. In this review, we first introduce a series of synthesis methods and the intrinsic mechanism about how to regulate the dendritic structure, then analyze their unique structural characteristics and the corresponding physicochemical properties, subsequently present a few examples of interesting applications mainly in catalysis, biomedicine, environment and energy, and other important fields, finally conclude with an outlook on the prospects and challenges in terms of their controlled synthesis and potential applications.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Structural characteristics and properties
3 Synthesis strategies
3.1 Oil-water biphase stratification method
3.2 Special microemulsion systems
3.3 Dynamic ethyl ether emulsion systems
3.4 Dynamic polystyrene template
3.5 Soft template caused by strong counterion
3.6 Other approaches
4 Applications
4.1 Catalysis
4.2 Biomedical and biotechnological applications
4.3 Other applications