New cyclic tetranuclear copper(II) complexes containing quadrilateral cores: Synthesis, structure, spectroscopy and their interactions with DNA in aqueous solution

Abstract

Three new cyclic tetranuclear copper(II) complexes, Tetrakis{3-[(2-pyridylmethyl)-amino]-propionato}(tetrachloro)tetracopper(II)methanolhydrate (1·CH3OH·H2O), Tetrakis{3-[(2-pyridylmethyl)-amino]-propionato}(tetrathiocyanato)tetracopper(II) (2) and Tetrakis{3-[(2-pyridylmethyl)-amino]-propionato}(tetraazido)tetracopper(II) (3) have been synthesized by exploiting the chelating ability and bridging potential of a carboxyamine functionalized tridentate ligand, HL (HL = 3-[(2-Pyridylmethyl)-amino]-propionic acid). Complexes 1, 2 and 3 have been synthesized by carrying out reaction of the ligand HL with stoichiometric amounts of CuCl2·2H2O, CuCl2·2H2O/NH4SCN, and CuCl2·2H2O/NaN3, respectively, in the presence of NMe4OH at ambient temperature. Various analytical techniques have been employed to characterize the complexes, including single crystal X-ray diffraction study of 1. Structures of complexes 2 and 3 have been optimized by DFT calculation at B3LYP/6-311G level. Analysis of X-ray crystal structure reveals that the metallic core of complex 1 contains four distorted square pyramidal Cu(II) ions. The Cu(II) ions in each complex are arranged at the corners of a quadrilateral showing a μ2:η1:η1syn-anti bidentate bridging mode of four carboxylate groups of L− ligands with each bridging between two Cu(II) ions. These complexes represent a new family of 16-MCCuII-4 metallocoronates with repeating -[CuIIOCO]- units. In aqueous solution (pH∼7.5), the interactions of complexes with DNA have been investigated by UV–Vis and fluorescence titration spectroscopy, and viscosity measurements.