Research rticle Synthesis, Characterization, and Antimicrobial Activity of Novel Sulfonated Copper-Triazine Complexes Supun Katugampala, 1 Inoka C. Perera, 2 Chandrika Nanayakkara, 3 and Theshini Perera 1 1 Department of Chemistry, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka 2 Department of Zoology and Environment Science, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka 3 Department of Plant Science, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka Correspondence should be addressed to eshini Perera; theshi@sjp.ac.lk Received 6 April 2018; Revised 5 June 2018; Accepted 8 July 2018; Published 29 August 2018 Academic Editor: Aurel Tabacaru Copyright © 2018 Supun Katugampala et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Metallotriazine complexes possess interesting biological and medicinal properties, and the present study focuses on the synthesis, characterization, and antimicrobial activity of four novel copper-triazine derivatives in search of potent antibacterial and antifungal drug leads. In this study, 3-(2-pyridyl)-5,6-diphenyl-1,2,4-triazine-4,4′-disulfonic acid monosodium salt (L1, ferrozine) and 3-(2-pyridyl)-5,6-di(2-furyl)-1,2,4-triazine-5,5′-disulfonic acid disodium salt (L2, ferene) have been used as ligands to study the complexation towards copper(II). e synthesized complexes, [CuCl 2 (ferrozine)]·7H 2 O·MeOH ( 1), [CuCl 2 (ferrozine) 2 ]·5H 2 O·MeOH (2), [CuCl 2 (ferene)]·H 2 O·MeOH (3), and [CuCl 2 (ferene) 2 ]·H 2 O·MeOH (4), have been characterized spectroscopically, and preliminary bioassays have been carried out. FTIR spectroscopic data have shown that N�NandC�N stretching frequencies of complexes have been shifted towards lower frequencies in comparison with that of the ligands, confirming new bond formation between Cu and N, which in turn lowers the strength of N�N and C�N bonds. In addition, a bathochromic shift has been observed for UV-visible spectra of complexes ( 1), (2), (3), and (4). Furthermore, elemental analysis data have been useful to obtain empirical formulas of these complexes and to establish the purity of each complex. Complexes ( 1)and(2) have shown antibacterial activity for both S. aureus (ATCC ® 25923) and E. coli (ATCC ® 25922) at 1mg/disc concentration, and ferrozine has shown a larger inhibition zone against the clinical sample of C. albicans at 1mg/disc concentration in comparison with the positive control, fluconazole. 1. Introduction Transition metals have numerous and unique biological, chemical, and physical properties due to the availability of d electrons in valance shells. Much attention has been focused on copper complexes due to their various potential biological activities [1–4] out of which antimicrobial [5] and antiviral activities is paramount [6–15]. Since triazine is a well-known natural material which possesses many biological properties [16–21], it is not sur- prising that organometallic complexes of triazine with first row transition metals (Mn [22, 23], Co [24, 25], Ni [24, 25], Cu [22, 24–28], and Zn [25]), with second row transition metals (Ru [29], Pd [30], Ag [31], and Cd [32]), and with third row transition metals (Re [33] and Pt [34–36]) have been synthesized, and their activities explored as catalysts [37] and biological agents such as antibacterial [25], anti- cancer [29, 36], antifouling [24], antifungal [33], anti-HIV [35], antimicrobial [25], antiproliferative [26, 34], antiviral [28, 35], and DNA binding [26, 29, 30] agents. Even though many reports exist of metal complexes of triazine derivatives as detailed above, metal complexes con- taining the pyridyl-1,2,4-triazine core are relatively un- explored. Platinum(II) complexes of sulphonated 2-pyridyl- 1,2,4-triazine have been reported to possess anti-HIV activity [35]. A copper(II) complex bearing 2,4,6-tris(2-pyridyl)-1,3,5- triazine ligand has been reported to bind DNA in a moder- ately strong way exhibiting significantly better anticancer activity against breast cancer in comparison with cisplatin [26]. An octahedral complex of rhenium(V), ML1L2L3L4 Hindawi Bioinorganic Chemistry and Applications Volume 2018, Article ID 2530851, 7 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/2530851