A carbosilane dendrimer constituting hydrophilic silacrown ethers in the periphery [Si(CH2CH2CH2SiMe2CH2CH2(SiMe(OCH2CH2)(4)O))(4)] have been synthesized by the divergent-convergent growth method. Conventional vertical-dip method was adopted to successfully fabricate Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films of the dendrimer on a single crystal silicon substrate up to 5 layers. Dendrimer molecules show edge-on configuration in the air-water interface which was confirmed by the surface pressure-cove rage area isotherms. The deposition of the above LB layers onto a silicon substrate was done which was analysed by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Further, citrate reduction chemistry was successfully applied to synthesize mono-dispersed dendrimer-protected silver and gold nanoparticles. The silver and gold nanoparticles were characterized by UV-vis, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Dendrimer-stabilized metal nanoparticles exhibit mono-dispersed, spherical and pearl chain-like morphology. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.