Hydroxypyrone derivatives have a good bioavailability in rats and mice and have been used in drug development. Moreover, they show chelating properties towards vanadyl cation that could be used in insulin-mimetic compound development. In this work, the formation of coordination compounds of oxovanadium(IV) with four kojic acid (5-hydroxy-2-(hydroxymethyl)-4-pyrone) derivatives was studied. The synthetized studied ligands (S2, S3, S4, and SC) have two or three kojic acid units linked through diamines or tris(2-aminoethyl)amine chains, respectively. The chemical systems were studied by potentiometry (25 °C, ionic strength 0.1 mol L−1 with KCl), and UV-visible and EPR spectroscopy. The experimental data were analyzed by a thermodynamic and a chemometric (Multivariate Curve Resolution−Alternating Least Squares) approach. Chemical coordination models were proposed, together with the species formation constants and the pure estimated UV-vis and EPR spectra. In all systems, the coordination of the oxovanadium(IV) starts already under acidic conditions (the cation is totally bound at pH higher than 3−4) and the metal species remain stable even at pH 8. Ligands S3, S4, and SC form three coordination species. Two of them are probably due to the successive insertion of the kojate units in the coordination shell, whereas the third is most likely a hydrolytic species.
