Preparation , Characterization and Electrochemical Studies of Dinuclear Copper ( II ) Complexes with Pseudohalides and Bidentate Amines on Platinum Electrode in Acetonitrile

Preparação, caracterização e o comportamento eletroquímico dos complexos: [Cu(N3)2(N,N-diEten)]2 , [Cu(N3 )2 (tmeen)]2 , [Cu(N3 )(NCO)(N,N-diEten)]2 , [Cu(N3)2(N,N’-diMeen)]2 e [Cu(N3)(NCO)(tmeen)]2 são apresentados e discutidos. Os estudos eletroquímicos foram realizados utilizando-se as técnicas de voltametria cíclica e eletrólise a potencial controlado. Os voltamogramas cíclicos de todos complexos são semelhantes e apresentam um par de picos de corrente en tre -0,65 e 0,0 V. A eletrólise a potencial controlado, em ≅ -0,55 V, forneceu 1,8 < n < 2,1 para todos os compostos, indicando a redução de Cu(II) a Cu(I) em ambos os centros metálicos. A comparação dos valores dos potenciais de pico do par Cu(II)/Cu(I) desses complexos mostra que esse processo re dox é fracamente influenciado pela basicidade dos ligantes.

The com plexes: [Cu(N 3 ) 2 (N,N-diEten)] 2 , [Cu(N 3 ) 2 (tmeen)] 2 , [Cu(N 3 )(NCO)(N,N-diEten)] 2 , [Cu(N 3)2(N,N'-diMeen)] 2 and [Cu(N 3)(NCO)(tmeen)] 2 were pre pared, char ac ter ized and their elec tro chem i cal be hav ior was in ves ti gated by cy clic voltammetry and con trolled po ten ti al elec troly sis.Cy clic voltammograms for all com plexes stud ied are sim i lar and ex hibit one pair of cur rent peaks in the range of -0.65 to +0.0 V.The num ber of elec trons ob tained from con trolled po ten tial elec trol y sis at ca. -0.55 V for all com pounds was 1.8 ® n ® 2.1, in di cat ing that both cop per(II) metal lic cen tres in the mol e cule were re duced to cop per (I).Com paring the peak po ten tial va l ues for these com plexes one can ob serve that the re dox pro cess cor re spond ing to cop per(II)/cop per( I) couple is slightly in flu enced by the σ-ba sic ity of the lig ands.

In tro duc tion
The cop per (II) com plexes con tain ing pseudohalide ligands have gained much im por tance in re cent years con sid ering that their re dox prop er ties can con trib ute to better un der stand ing of the struc ture and func tion of cop per proteins [1][2][3] .Al though a num ber of ex am ples are avail able in the lit er a ture re gard ing cy clic voltammetric stud ies of dinuclear cop per(II) com plexes with dif fer ent do nor sites [4][5][6][7][8][9] , as far as we know, there is no in for ma tion about the elec tro chem i cal be hav ior of dinuclear cop per(II) com pounds con tain ing pseudohalides and bidentate amine lig ands.
We are in ter ested in un der stand ing the elec tro chem i cal be hav ior of the com plexes: where N,N-diEten = N,N-diethylethylenediamine; N,N'-diMeen = N,N'-dimethylethylenediamine and tmeen = N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine, and then de ter mine the in flu ence of the lig ands on the re dox po ten tial of the me tal lic cen tre.In this work we re port the elec tro chem i cal re sults for these com plexes, in deaerated acetonitrile so lu tion con tain ing 0.5 M NaClO 4 , ob tained by means of cy clic voltammetry and con trolled po ten tial elec trol y sis.The prep a ra tion and charac ter iza tion of the com plexes (IV) and (V) are also discussed.

Syn the sis and char ac ter iza tion of the cop per com plexes
The com pounds (I) , (II) and (III) were pre pared and char ac ter ized as pre vi ously de scribed [10][11][12] .For these complexes the cop per(II) con tent, de ter mined by complexometric ti tra tion with stan dard EDTA so lu tion, using PAN 0.05% in eth a nol as in di ca tor 13 , and the el e men tal anal y sis of C, H and N were in agree ment with the lit er ature.
The com pounds (IV) and (V) were ob tained for the first time in our lab o ra tory.The complexe (IV) was pre pared by dropwise ad di tion, with stir ring, of a so lu tion of NaN 3 (3.00mmol) in a so lu tion con tain ing Cu(NO 3)2.3H 2O (3.00 mmol) and N,N-diEten (2.82 mmol) in eth a nol.When the pre cip i ta tion was com pleted the so lu tion was fil tered and the prod uct washed with di ethyl ether and fi nally dried in vacuo.Found: The in fra red spec tra were re corded on a Nicolet 730 SX-FT spectrophotometer us ing CsI pel lets.

Elec tro chem i cal mea sure ments
Elec tro chem i cal mea sure ments were per formed with a PAR Model 273A potentiostat/galvanostat equipped with a X-Y re corder.Cy clic voltammograms were re corded in acetronitrile so lu tions con tain ing 0.5 M NaClO 4 as support ing elec tro lyte at room tem per a ture.The 1-3 mM sample so lu tions were purged with dry and pu ri fied ar gon be fore each ex per i ment.A con ven tional elec tro chem i cal cell hav ing a plat i num disc (A geom = 0.2 cm 2 ) as work ing elec trode, a plat i num-wire as coun ter elec trode and an Ag/AgNO 3 (10 -2 M) as ref er ence elec trode was em ployed.At the end of each ex per i ment, ferrocene was added as inter nal ref er ence.Un der this con di tion the peak po ten tial for F ec ⊗ F ec + + e -re ac tion was lo cated at 0.04 V.For controlled po ten tial elec trol y sis a net work plat i num was used as work ing elec trode.

Re sults and Dis cus sion
1][12] Pseudohalide com plexes (IV) and (V) may have ei ther monomeric or dimeric struc tures.The main bands in the in fra red spec tra of the com plexes (IV) and (V) are listed with their de scrip -tions and as sign ments in Ta ble 1.The in fra red spec tra of these com plexes are sim i lar and show ab sorp tion bands char ac ter is tic for the amines co or di nated to cop per (II) 14 .Fur ther more, bands cor re spond ing to the vi bra tional modes of pseudohalide groups are also pres ent in the spectra and have been as signed for each com plex.The val ues listed for pseudohalide bands in Ta ble 1 sup port the presence in com plex (IV) of ter mi nal and bridg ing end-on azides.For the com plex (V) the re sults sug gest a unique coor di na tion mode for cyanate and azide.This par tic u lar com plex may be a dimeric com pound with ter mi nal N-bonded cyanate and bridge end-on azide.Thus, these brief com ments of the spec tros copy data al low us to pre dict that the cop per ions in the com pounds (IV) and (V) are in a five co or di nate en vi ron ment and the com plexes have dimeric struc tures.
For the blank so lu tion no an odic or cath odic peaks in the po ten tial range from.-1.2 to +2.0 V were ob served.The cy clic voltammogram of dried Cu(ClO 4 ) 2 (green so lu tion) de picts a cath odic cur rent peak at 0.4 V and an an odic current peak at 0.8 V.This pair of peaks is pos si bly due to the Cu(II)/Cu(I) re dox pro cess.At more neg a tive po ten tials an other pair of cur rent peaks at -1 and -0.5 V is ob served, which was at trib uted to Cu(I)/Cu(0) re dox pro cess.The free azide ligand does not show any cur rent peak in the poten tial range from -0.8 to +1.5 V, but an an odic cur rent peak is ob served at 1.7 V, prob a bly due to the azide ox i dation to form N 2 .The N,N-diEten ligand ex hib its two an odic cur rent peaks at 0.92 and 1.38 V, the N,N'-diMeen shows only one an odic cur rent peak at 0.9 V and tmeen ex hib its two an odic cur rent peaks at 0.97 V and 1.31 V, in di cat ing that the diamine ox i da tion is an ir re vers ible pro cess.For these lig ands no cath odic cur rent peaks are ob served in the   that the peak po ten tial val ues do not dif fer sig nif i cantly, however com plex (II) shows the least neg a tive po ten tial for re duction of a metal cen tre (-0.43 V).In the case of com plexes (III) and (V) com plex (V) has the least neg a tive po ten tial value.This fact can be at trib uted to the lower σ-ba sic ity of the amine tmeen.Thus, as the elec tron den sity on the metal ion decreases the re duc tion po ten tial be comes less neg a tive.All the com plexes also ex hib ited two more an odic cur rent peaks in the po ten tial range from 0.6 to 0.9 V lo cated at ≅ 0.6 and 0.8 V.The cor re spond ing cath odic cur rent peaks were not ob served (see Fig. 2).The num ber of elec trons ob tained from con trolled po ten tial elec trol y sis at 0.9 V for the com pounds was 3.6 ® n ® 4.1.The IR spec tra of the elec trol y sis prod uct was re corded in KBr pel lets and the ab sorp tion bands cor respond ing to co or di nated azides lig ands were ob served.These ob ser va tions sug gest that an odic cur rent peaks ob served at more pos i tive po ten tial can be re lated to the ir re vers ible ox ida tion of cop per(II) com plexes to cop per(III) com plexes.

Ac knowl edg ments
The fi nan cial as sis tance of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico -CNPq and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo -FAPESP is grate fully ac knowl edged.One of the au thors (V.Sargentelli) is also grate ful to CNPq and Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Supe rior -CAPES, Brazil for Ph.D. schol ar ship.

Ta ble 2 :
Data ob tained from the cy clic voltammograms for the com plexes.