BackgroundThe increasing prevalence of multi-drug resistant fungal infections has encouraged the search for new antifungal agents. Hydrazone derivatives always exhibited diversity activities, including antifungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidation, anti-cancer activity. Regarding the heterocyclic moiety, 1,2,4-triazolo[4,3-a]pyridine derivatives also display broad activities, such as antifungal activity, anticonvulsant activity, herbicidal activity, antimicrobial activity and anticancer activity.ResultsA series of novel 1,2,4-triazolo[4,3-a]pyridine derivatives containing hydrazone moiety were designed and synthesized from 2,3-dichloropyridine, hydrazine hydrate by multi-step reactions under microwave irradiation condition, and their structures were characterized by FT IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR, 19F NMR, MS and elemental analysis. The antifungal activities of title compounds were determined. The results indicated that some of the title compounds exhibited good antifungal activity. Furthermore, DFT calculation was carried out for studying the structure–activity relationship (SAR).ConclusionA practical synthetic route to obtain 1,2,4-triazolo[4,3-a]pyridine derivatives is presented. This study suggests that the 1,2,4-triazolo[4,3-a]pyridine derivatives exhibited good antifungal activity.