Efficient stabilization of copper(III) in tetraaza pseudo-macrocyclic oxime-and-hydrazide ligands with adjustable cavity size.

Substitution of the amide donors in open-chain {2N(oxime), 2N(amide)} ligands by hydrazide donors gives new pseudo-macrocyclic copper complexes that show a significant decrease of the Cu(3+/2+) redox potentials in both mono- and polynuclear systems, thus demonstrating a pronounced capacity of such ligand systems to efficiently stabilize the trivalent copper.