Bis(hydroxymethyl)phosphinic acid and melamine were shown by FTIR and UV spectroscopy to form the salt (melafen), whose cations and anions involving water molecules can be joined into supramolecular structures due to electrostatic interactions and hydrogen bonds. The conductometry, dielcometric titration, and dynamic light scattering methods showed that melafen in water and chloroform in a concentration range of 10 -10 -10 -4 mol L -1 involving the solvent structures exist as supramolecular polymeric nanostructures, whose size and properties change nonlinearly depending on the melafen concentration.The melamine salt of bis(hydroxymethyl)phosphinic acid dihydrate (melafen, 1) is an efficient regulator of plant growth and development, which is of considerable interest for practical use in agriculture and biotech nology. 1,2a The studies of the influence of compound 1 on the growth and energy processes in the living cell 3 and on the physicochemical state of biological membranes of various origin, 4 as well as the investigation of the mecha nism of action of the compound on the regulation of the plant cell metabolism 2b revealed that melafen is highly physiologically active at low concentrations, which are classified as low and superlow doses of biologically active substances. 5,6 The existing hypotheses for the mechanism of action of the superlow doses cannot completely explain the nature of this widespread phenomenon. 5,6 Therefore, the broad study of the effect of biologically active sub stances of the melafen type on systems of different levels of complexity and organization, namely, from supramo lecular systems modeling functions of biomolecules to complicated biological objects, seems especially urgent.Our first report is devoted to the study of the structure of melafen and its self association in aqueous and organic (chloroform) media. The interaction of melafen with surfactants of different nature and their micellar aggre gates modeling the components and surface layer of bio logical membranes will be discussed elsewhere.
ExperimentalMelafen (1) was synthesized according to an earlier described procedure. 1 The association of compound 1, bis(hydroxymethyl) phosphinic acid (BPA), and melamine (M) in chloroform was studied by dielcometric titration, during which the concentration dependences of the dielectric permittivity (ε) were obtained and analyzed. 7-10 The dielectric permittivities of a series of solutions were determined on a setup consisting of an E12 I instrument operating in the beat mode and a measuring cell, being a tempera ture controlled condenser. Chloroform was purified using a stan dard method. 11 The estimation of the residual water content carried out by FTIR spectroscopy showed that the chloroform samples used contained ~0.1 wt.% water. The association of compound 1, BPA, and M in water was studied by the conductometric method, measur ing the change in the electric conductivity (χ) of the solutions at 25 °С (inoLab Cond Level 1 conductometer, relative measurement error 0.5%). Water and solu...