Influence of Zn-Cd substitution: Spectroscopic and theoretical investigation of 8-hydroxyquinoline complexes

It is now well known that zinc is crucial for the synthesis of nucleic acids and, consequently, for cellular division. However, 67Zn, the NMR-detectable isotope, is one of the isotopes most poorly studied by NMR. The strategy used for NMR studies is the substitution of Zn by 113Cd. In this work, we employed 13C, 113Cd NMR (CPMAS), X-ray and DFT calculation in order to evaluate the Zn-Cd substitution using 8-hydroxyquinoline like prototype compound. Our results show that there are strong structural and electronics effects are involved in the substitution.