Sterically hindered mononuclear and binuclear Cu(I) complexes: Synthesis, characterization, docking analysis and antimicrobial evaluation

Abstract

Mononuclear (1:3) and dinuclear (1:1.5 and 1:1), of the Copper(I) halide complexes containing triphenylphosphine, tri-metatolylphosphine, tri-(o-tolylphosphine) and tri-(p-tolylphosphine) were synthesized by the direct reactions of copper halide salts and phosphine ligands. Twelve complexes were synthesized, in which some complexes have been already reported and resynthesized by modifying the previous reported procedure. The structures and composition of the synthesized complexes were characterized by various techniques like Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR), 1H, 13C, 31P NMR spectroscopy, single crystal XRD and EDX techniques. Most of the complexes exhibit mononuclear tetrahedral geometry while those with substituted phosphines exhibit bridged binuclear mode in which one copper atom exhibits distorted tetrahedral while the other copper exhibits trigonal geometry. The synthesized compounds are also evaluated for antibacterial and antifungal activity and theoretically studied for their affinity against different antibacterial targets as well as antifungal target. It was concluded that compound I showed enhanced binding affinity for both antibacterial and antifungal targets.