Synthesis of h5 -C5H4R based compounds with functional moieties for sensing and imaging applications

Abstract

Molecular compounds involving organometallic scaffolds like metallocenes and half-sandwich moieties with varied functionalities have been synthesized for their application as chemo-sensors, molecular recognition, multichannel receptor, protein binding studies, imaging agent and biosensor molecules etc. 1. Over the years, organometallic frameworks have shown unique properties of induced switching using external stimuli which led to the development of high sensitive fluorescence based molecular imaging techniques for several biological studies. In view of their enormous opportunity and to understand extensively the structure – property relationship for these organometallic compounds, we carried out the synthesis and characterization of some cyclopentadienyl based sandwich and half-sandwich organometallic compounds linked to organic chains, fluorescent active groups and bioactive groups to explore their biological, electrochemical and photophysical properties.2 We recently focused our study on rhodamine based cymantrenyl and ferrocenyl organometallic moieties and observed distinct sensing, switching and photo-induced properties. The phenomena have been investigated inside bacterial and cancerous cell to understand their potential in applications related to imaging, uptake and biosensing activities. We also explored some unique hydrogen bonding interactions across the side chains of ferrocenyl fragment to obtain enantiomeric structures.