Enhanced Catalytic Activity of Binuclear Oxidovanadium(IV) Bisbenzimidazole Linked Porphyrin Dimer for the Generation of Biologically Active 3,4-Dihydropyrimidinones and Their Corresponding Thiones.

Binuclear vanadyl(IV) porphyrin ( V 2 BP ), where two vanadium(IV) porphyrin macrocycles are linked through benzimidazole units at the β-positions, has been prepared and characterized with various techniques, such as UV-vis, Fourier transform-infrared, electron paramagnetic resonance, cyclic voltammetry, density functional transform calculations, and mass spectrometry. V 2 BP exhibits a red shift (Δλ max = 10 nm) in the Soret band as compared with unsubstituted parent vanadyl(IV) meso -tetraphenylporphyrin ( VP ). The synthesized binuclear vanadyl(IV) porphyrin ( V 2 BP ) has further been studied as a catalyst to explore a single-pot multicomponent Biginelli reaction producing biologically active 3,4-dihydropyrimidin-2-(1 H )-one (DHPM)-based biomolecules and the corresponding thiones under solvent-free conditions and its catalytic activity has been compared with vanadyl(IV) meso -tetraphenylporphyrin ( VP ). Several reaction conditions, such as the amount of catalyst, time, solvent, and temperature, have been optimized to obtain the maximum yield of DHPMs or thiones. The synthesized β-functionalized V 2 BP porphyrin dimer manifests much higher conversion (84-95% yield) of DHPMs or the corresponding thiones under the optimized reaction conditions with high TON (4454-5037) and TOF (1113-1259 h -1 ) values for the one-pot multicomponent Biginelli reaction as compared to the literature. The catalyst exhibited excellent recyclability up to 10 cycles.