Two copper ternary complexes of N-salicylidene-DL-valinato Schiff base with 1,10-phenan- throline [Cu(salval)(phen)] (1) and 2,2’-bipyridine [Cu(salval)(bpy)]•3H2O (2) were synthesized and characterized via elemental analysis, molar conductance, IR, UV and TG-DTG. The structure of 2 was determined by single crystal X-ray crystallography, which is of triclinic, space group P-1 with a＝0.92676(3) nm, b＝1.03143(4) nm, c＝1.25042(3) nm, α＝74.108(2)°, β＝77.2240(10)°, γ＝81.5880(10)°, V＝1.11642(6) nm3, Dc＝1.467 g•cm－3, Z＝2, F(000)＝514, R1＝0.0441 and wR2＝0.0856 [I＞2σ(I)]. At the same time, the binding reaction between the complexes and bovine serum albumin (BSA) was studied by fluorescence spectroscopy. The research results indicated that the two complexes had a quite strong ability to quench the fluorescence from BSA and their combination reactions were mainly a static quenching process. The two complexes strongly bound BSA with a molar ratio of 1∶1 and the binding constant KA values at 25 ℃ were 6.50×105 (1) and 4.33×105 (2) L•mol－1, respectively. The shortest binding distance r between the donor BSA and acceptor of the ternary complexes were 3.85 (1) and 4.26 (2) nm, respectively, which affirms that the ternary complexes have partly inserted into the hydrophobic pocket of BSA and the interaction ability of complex 1 is stronger than that of complex 2.

Key words: valine, salicylaldehyde, copper complex, N,N’-heterocyclic base, bovine serum albumin (BSA), fluorescence spectra