Promising Antimicrobial Activity of an Oxime Based Palladium(II) Complex

This work delineates with the development of a novel oxime based palladium complex as a promising antimicrobial agent. A novel oxime based ligand, 3-[(2-hydroxy-naphthalen-1-ylmethylene)-hydrazono]-butan-2-one oxime (LH), has been employed to synthesize an orange, monomeric, diamagnetic palladium(II) compound, [Pd(L)(Cl)] (1) in moderate yield. LH is a monocondensate Schiff-base of 2,3-butanedionemonoxime monohydrazone and 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde in tetrahydrofuran. Both the ligand and its palladium compound have been characterized by spectroscopic and analytical techniques. The X-ray crystal structure of 1 reveals that the palladium center in [Pd(L)(Cl)] is nested in a distorted square-planar 'N2OCl'coordination environment. The electrochemical behavior of [Pd (L)(Cl)] in DMF shows a Pd(II)/ Pd(I) irreversible reduction couple. The in vitro antibacterial activity of [Pd(L)(Cl)] was tested against a good number of human pathogenic Grampositive and Gram-negative bacterial cell lines. The in vitro antifungal activity of the titled palladium compound was screened against several pathogenic fungal strains. The promising antimicrobial efficacy of the palladium compound was corroborated through SEM study.