Synthesis, Optical Properties And Cell Imaging Of Curcumin Derivatives And Metal Complexes

Curcumin is one compound which has excellent anti-oxidation and anti-tumor activites, as well as excellent optical property. The curcumin could be used as β-diketone ligand to from the metal complexes under the alkaline conditions, which had many applications in luminescent and biomedicine and so on.Seven of curcumin derivative ligands（L^1L7） and two copper（Ⅱ） complexes（Cu L¹₂, Cu L²₂） were synthesized by curcumin and metal salts as raw materials. The chemical structures of the target ligands were characterized by spectroscopic methods and their crystal structures were determined by X-ray diffraction.At some time, their optical properties were tested and cell imaging applications were investigated. The research was introduced as follows:1. Seven curcumin ligands and two metal complexes were designed and synthesized. Their structures were characterized by IR, 1H-NMR and MS. Six crystals of ligands and one crystal of complex had been cultured, so their structures were further confirmed by the X-ray. And the results showed, L¹, L², L⁴ existed in enol form and had good planarity, L³ existed in ketone form. L⁵, L⁶ were the trisubstituted derivatives of curcumin. The crystal structure of complex showed Cu L²₂ was a planar structure with copper atom in the center coordinated by four oxygen atoms of two β-diketone ligands.2. Their optical properties were tested by UV-visible absorption spectrocopy, single-photon fluorescence spectroscopy and two-photon fluorescence spectroscopy. The results had shown that the complex possessed better single-photon fluorescence and two-photon fluorescence than the ligands. The solvent effects were observed significantly.3. Live melanoma tumor cells（B16） imaging results showed the ligands and complex went through the membrane and localized uniformly in the cytoplasm and emitted punctate fluorescence. However, the stability of the fluorescence was not good.