Synthesis, Characterization and Reactivity of Ferrocene Containing Organometallic Compounds

Abstract

For the last 65 years, research on ferrocenyl chemistry has continued to develop at a rapid pace giving rise to structurally unique molecules and novel compounds containing mono-, di- and multi-ferrocenyl entities. The ever increasing interest on this organometallic species is due to their potential to various applications related to organic synthesis, catalysis, bioorgametallic, advance materials, molecular recognition etc. In addition, a large number of studies on functionalization of ferrocene have suggested that ferrocenyl conjugates with heterocycle, polycyclic framework, amino acids, carbohydrate moieties and multimetallic systems could tune their biological and electronic properties. The significant change in the properties by incorporation or tagging of ferrocenyl fragments has been used to develop molecular compounds useful for application related to medicine, sensors, receptor etc. In this report we describe the design and synthesis of some novel ferrocenyl systems containing functional hydrazone chains and studied their electrochemical and biological properties. Ferrocenyl moiety has also been incorporated into metal-dithiocarboxylate complex to obtain a novel bimetallic system containing a half sandwich and a sandwich fragment bridged by a S2C3 unit. The ferrocene based metal dithiocarboxylate complexes have been obtained by a unique sunlight driven reaction process using carbondisulphide molecule developed recently by our group. Electrochemical investigation has been carried out to understand any electronic coupling behavior between the two metal centers in these types of molecules. More emphasis has been given to study the synthesis and reactivity of triiron telluride- and selenido- based cluster complexes to link with ferrocenyl diphosphines and explore their redox and biological properties. The study led to the development of different types of open and closed metal cluster systems involving ferrocenyl fragment. Their structural investigation by single crystal X-ray crystallography revealed interesting molecular features and atomic orientation. The thesis also describes the synthesis and characterization of hetero-metallic cluster molecules containing ferrocenyl fragment in different bonding modes. The structural uniqueness and ligation properties have been established by crystallographic techniques.