Review Chemistry of selenium/tellurium-containing Schiff base macrocycles Arunashree Panda a,⇑ , Snigdha Panda b , Kriti Srivastava c , Harkesh B. Singh c,⇑ a Chemistry Group, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani – K.K. Birla Goa Campus, Goa 403726, India b Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, India c Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India article info Article history: Available online 23 February 2011 Dedicated to Prof. S.S. Krishnamurthy Keywords: Schiff base Macrocycle Selenium Tellurium Cryptand abstract This paper highlights our work to establish a new class of macrocycles based on Schiff base condensation chemistry. The chemistry of a series of azomethine macrocycles, with selenium/tellurium atoms in o-positions with respect to the C@N bond is discussed. These are the first Schiff base macrocycles to incor- porate selenium or tellurium atom in the ring. The strong stabilization of the 10-E-3 (E = Se/Te) structures of these macrocycles by E–N coordination permits the access to these novel macrocycles by [2+2] tem- plate-free condensation of bis(aldehyde) with primary diamines. The success of cyclization has been con- firmed by the usual methods of IR, NMR and X-ray structural determinations. After a brief discussion of the synthetic methods adopted for these macrocycles, their complexing abilities toward different metal ions are covered. The macrocyclic polyamine ligands, derived by reduction of the corresponding Schiff bases, readily form complexes with a range of metal ions. This allows a comparison of the properties of complexes of these ligands with those derived from the Schiff bases containing the same denticity but having a different flexibility. The selena- and tellura-macrocycles reported by other groups in the field are also included for comparison. Also discussed is the anion binding studies of some of these macrocycles. Ó 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Arunashree Panda received her M.Sc. from Sambalpur University in 1993 and her Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2000 under the supervision of Prof. H.B. Singh. Subsequently she joined the laboratory of Prof. Philip Power at the University of California, Davis and Prof. Peter Comba at the University of Heidelberg, Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow. Currently she is working as a scientist at Birla Institute of Technology and Science for a DST funded project under the scheme ‘‘DST Fast Track for Young Scientist’’. Her current research interests are centered on novel selenium/ tellurium-containing Schiff base macrocycles and their further chemistry. Snigdha Panda obtained her undergraduate education at Ravenshaw University, Cuttack in 1997 and her Ph.D. at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2005 under the guidance of Prof. H.B. Singh. After a brief sabbatical, she is working as a research scientist from March 2008 at IISER Kolkata for a DST funded project under the scheme ‘‘DST Fast Track for Young Scientist’’. Her current research interest is chemistry of macrocyclic and podand type ligands having chalcogen donor atoms. 0020-1693/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ica.2011.02.031 ⇑ Corresponding authors. Tel.: +91 832 2580389; fax: +91 832 2557033. E-mail addresses: panda_arunashree@yahoo.com (A. Panda), chhbsia@chem.iitb. ac.in (H.B. Singh). Inorganica Chimica Acta 372 (2011) 17–31 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Inorganica Chimica Acta journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ica