Synthesis, Characterization and in Vitro Antimicrobial Screening of the Xanthate Derivatives and their Iron(II) Complexes

Seven reported xanthate ligands and their new Fe(II) complexes of formulaNa[Fe(R-OCSS)3], where R is ethyl-, propyl-, butyl-, pentyl-, Hexyl-, heptyl- and octyl-xanthate have been synthesized. They have been characterized using elemental analysis, molar conductance, FT-IR, UV-Vis and 1H NMR spectroscopic techniques and melting-, decomposition-points for ligands and complexes respectively. All the ligands and their Fe(II) complexes have been evaluated for their antimicrobial activity against four gram-positive bacteria, four gram-negative bacteria and three fungi by agar disc diffusion technique. The MIC values of the compounds exhibited significant antifungal activity but showed lower antibacterial activity. The iron(II) complexes are found to possess higher antimicrobial activity than their counterpart ligands thus improving its antimicrobial efficacy. Hydrocarbon chain length of the ligands coordinated to Fe(II) centers seemed to be important for their antifungal as well as antibacterial activities.